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THE RELIGION OF THE MITHRAS CULT IN THE
ROMAN EMPIRE

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The Religion of

the Mithras Cult in the

Roman Empire

Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun

ROGER BECK

OXFORD

UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXFORD

UNIVERSITY PRESS
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To Richard Gordon, John Hinnells, and Luther Martin

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Preface

This book has been many, many years in the making. So it is appropriate that
I dedicate it to the three scholars who over the years have helped me most along
the way with their friendship, encouragement, and wise counsel on the Mysteries
of Mithras and how to address them. There are of course many others who have
generously aided me, and I hope they will excuse me if I do not repeat here the
acknowledgements recently made in the collection of my past articles and new
essays, Beck on Mithraism.

I do however want to thank my editor Hilary O'Shea for her trust and
forbearance over what must surely be one of the lengthiest projects to come to
fruition and a record-holder in deadlines overrun. I also want to thank my
research assistant Norman Valdez for his skilful production of the diagrams.

Since Chapter 1 is entirely programmatic, I shall refrain from introducing my
subject and outlining my methods here. Let the Table of Contents which follows
serve as a map of the road ahead.

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Contents

List of Figures xiv

Abbreviations xv

1. Introduction to Interpreting the Mysteries: Old Ways, New Ways 1

1 . An agenda 1

2. A word on ontology 8

3. Template for a re-description of the Mithraic mysteries 10

4. On comparisons 12

5. On cognition 13

6. Synchronic versus diachronic; structure and meaning versus

historic cause and effect; interpretation versus explanation 14

7. Conclusion 15

2. Old Ways: The Reconstruction of Mithraic Doctrine from
Iconography 1 6

1 . A gateway to an interpretation of the mysteries: Porphyry,
De antro nympharum 6, on the form and function of the
mithraeum 16

2. The traditional route: from the iconography of the monuments

to the myth of Mithras to the beliefs of Mithraists 17

3. The merits and achievements of the traditional heuristic procedure 20

4. The shortcomings of the traditional heuristic procedure 22
Appendix: some remaining methodological problems for the
explication of the Mithras myth as represented on the figured
monuments 25

3. The Problem of Referents: Interpretation with Reference to What? 26

1 . Iconography and the problem of referents 26

2. Referents in the surrounding culture? 26

3. Iranian referents? 28

4. Celestial (astronomical/astrological) referents? 30

5. Conclusion 39

4. Doctrine Redefined 41

1. Back to Porphyry, De antro 6 41

2. 'Induction into a mystery': the doctrinal misconstruction of

De antro 6 41

x Contents

3. Teaching versus enacting the 'descent and departure of souls':

the commonsensical answer 42

4. An expectation of appropriate behaviour 43

5. 'Reason for the wise, symbols for the vulgar' 44

6. Mithraic doctrine and its stakeholders: various views 50

7. Doctrine and belief: the Christian 'faith paradigm 53

8. Mithraic doctrine: three main issues 56

9. (i) Generalizing about Mithraic doctrine from unusual
monuments 57

10. (ii) What do we mean by 'doctrine' in the context of the

Mithraic mysteries? An array of answers 59

1 1 . (iii) Doctrine and the ordinary initiate 63

12. Conclusion 63

Transition: from old ways to new ways 65

5. The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I. Introduction and
Comparisons 67

1 . Religion as a system of symbols: an anthropological approach 67

2. Are Geertzian description and interpretation applicable to the

symbol system of the Mithraic mysteries? 69

3. Yes, Geertzian description and interpretation are possible,
provided we begin not with the tauroctony but with the

mithraeum and the grade structure 70

4. A culture within a culture: Mithraism as a subsystem within the
cultural system of Graeco-Roman paganism. The hermeneutic
implications 71

5. The symbol complex of the grade hierarchy 72

6. A modern comparator: the symbol system of the Chamulas 74

7. The construction of space in Mithraic and Chamula cultures 77

8. Mithraism's second axiom: 'Harmony of Tension in Opposition' 81
Appendix: on Porphyry's De antro nympharum as a reliable source of

data on the Mithraic mysteries 85

6. Cognition and Representation 88

1. The cognitive approach: ontogenetic/phylogenetic versus cultural 88

2. Gods in mind: cognition and the representation of supernatural
beings 93

3. Negotiating representations 94

4. Reintegrating the wise and the vulgar 96
Appendix: comprehending the pantomime: Lucian, On the dance 99

Contents xi

7. The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II. The Mithraeum 102

1 . The symbol complex of the mithraeum as 'image of the

universe' 1 02

2. The blueprint for the mithraeum 103

3. To represent \% to be 112

4. The blueprint continued: the planets 113

5. An improved reconstruction 115

6. Symbols, representations, and star-talk 116

7. The view from the benches: analogies of world view and ethos

to 'Scipio's dream' 117

8. The Chamula church 119

9. Other 'images of the universe' in antiquity: (i) the Pantheon,

Nero's Domus Aurea, Varro's aviary, the circus 120

10. Other 'images of the universe' in antiquity: (ii) orreries and

the Antikythera Mechanism, the sundial 123

1 1 . The mithraeum as symbolic instrument for 'inducting the
initiates into a mystery of the descent of souls and their exit

back out again' — with some modern comparisons 128

12. To 'experience', to 'surmise', and to 'represent': Dio's Twelfth
(Olympic) Oration 133

13. Religious experience as modelled by biogenetic structuralism

and 'neurotheology' 136

14. The 'cognized environment': the mithraeum as material
representation of the initiate's cognized universe 141

15. The cognized universe and celestial navigation: the case of

the Indigo Bunting 149

16. Conclusion 150

8. Star-Talk: The Symbols of the Mithraic Mysteries as Language

Signs 153

1. Introduction: 'star-talk 153

2. Mithraic iconography as 'un langage a dechiffrer' (R. Turcan) 154

3. Can symbols function as language signs? The question as posed

in cultural anthropology 155

4. Crossing Sperber's bar: the case for Mithraic astral symbols as
language signs 157

5. Star-talk: ancient views concerning its speakers, discourses,

semiotics, and semantics 164

6. Origen's view: 'heavenly writings' and their angelic readers 166

7. Augustine's view: star- talk as a demonic language contract 167

8. Origen again: the demonic misconstruction of star-talk 169

xii Contents

9. Stars talking theology: the 'heretical' interpreters of Aratus as

reported by Hippolytus {Refutatio 4.46-50) 170

10. Make-believe star-talk: Zeno of Verona's baptismal interpretation

of the zodiac 175

11. 'Rolling up the scroll': Maximus Confessor and the end of

history 177

12. Pagan views (astronomers, astrologers, philosophers); stars

as both speakers and signs 178

13. The divinity and rationality of celestial bodies: Ptolemy

and Plato 179

14. The Platonist view of how the stars communicate and how
we understand them; implications of the cosmology of the

Timaeus 183

15. The celestial location of meaning 186

16. Conclusion 188

9. The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III. The Tauroctony 190

1 . Introduction: the exegesis and interpretation of star-talk

discourse 190

2. The exegesis of star-talk in the tauroctony: A. The constellation

signs 194

3. Exegesis (continued): B. Sun, Moon, Mithras, bull (again), cave 197

4. Exegesis (continued): C. Map and view; boundaries and
orientation; time and motion. Similar structures: the augural
templum and the anaphoric clock 200

5. Exegesis (continued): D. Further meanings of the torchbearers:
the lunar nodes; celestial north and celestial south; heavenward
and earthward. Meanings of the 'typical' and 'untypical'
locations (Cautes left and Cautopates right versus Cautopates

left and Cautes right) 206

6. Exegesis (continued): E. Being in the north/ above or in the
south/below versus going northward/up or southward/down.
The solstices, the equinoxes, and yet further meanings of the
torchbearers 209

7. Exegesis (continued): F. Two paradoxes: (1) cold north and hot
south versus hot north and cold south; (2) descending from
heaven and growing up on earth versus dying down on earth
and ascending to heaven. Terrestrial meanings of the

torchbearers 212

8. Exegesis (continued): G. Where and when? 'Mithras the

bull-killer' means 'Sun-in- Leo' 214

Contents xiii

9. From exegesis to interpretation. An esoteric quartering of the

heavens 216

10. The implications of Sun-in- Leo and the esoteric quartering.
Conjunctions and eclipses; victories and defeats 222

1 1 . The origins of the esoteric quartering and the definition of

an ideal month 227

10. Excursus: the esoteric quartering, a lost helicoidal model of lunar
motion, and the origin of the 'winds' and 'steps' of the Moon.

The identity of 'Antiochus the Athenian' 240

Conclusions: a new basis for interpreting the mysteries 257

References 26 1

Index of Mithraic Monuments 273

Index of Ancient Authors 274

General Index 278

List of Figures

1. Zodiac from Taurus to Scorpius 32

2. The mithraeum as 'image of the universe' 103

3. The Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres, Ostia 104

4. A horizontal planar sundial 126

5. Tauroctony (V417) 194

6. Tauroctony (VI 11 8) 195

7. Southern paranatellonta 197

8. Tauroctony with zodiac (V8 10) 199

9. Tauroctony constellations rising from east 201

10. Tauroctony constellations setting in the west 202

1 1. Zodiac circle with tauroctony constellations 203

12. The Moon's orbit in relation to ecliptic 206

13. The solar year and Mithraic cosmology 210

14. An 'ideal' draco nitic month 220

15. Planetary positions at new moon, 5 July 62 bce 229
16a. 'Helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 1 243
16£. 'Helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 2 244
16c. 'Helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 3 244
17 a. The winds and steps of the Moon, 1 250
17b. The winds and steps of the Moon, 2 251

Abbreviations

ANRW Aufstieg und Niedergang der rbmischen Welt

BNP Beard, North, and Price 1998

CCAG Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum

EM Etudes mithriaques = Duchesne-Guillemin (ed.) 1978

EPRO Etudes preliminaires aux religions orientales dans
l'Empire romain

JMS Journal of Mithraic Studies

JRS Journal of Roman Studies

MM Mysteria Mithrae = Bianchi (ed.) 1979

MS Mithraic Studies = Hinnells (ed.) 1975

NEB New English Bible

OLD Oxford Latin Dictionary

SM Studies in Mithraism = Hinnells (ed.) 1994

V Corpus Lnscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae
(= Vermaseren 1956—60)

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Introduction to Interpreting the Mysteries:
Old Ways, New Ways

1. AN AGENDA

A study of the 'religion' of an ancient cult may seem to entail an artificial, even
perverse, distinction between the cult's religion and the cult itself, as if 'religion'
were somehow the cream to be skimmed from the surface of the institutional
milk. Such an undertaking would indeed be strange, especially these days when
students of religion in the Roman empire are with good reason more interested in
social formation than in theologoumena.

Please then be assured that in advancing a new interpretation of the 'mysteries'
of Mithras I am not proposing to treat Mithraism as a self-contained and
free-standing system separable in principle from actual Mithraists. We need
not — indeed should not — think of the 'religion' of the Mithras cult as a sort
of pre-existent package deal which a person bought into, as it were. Rather,
we should see it as an aspect of a collaborative human enterprise of a particular
time, place, and culture, constantly re-created and sustained by those initiated
into it.

Its contemporaries spoke of 'the Mysteries of Mithras', not of 'Mithraism'.
The latter, like all such '-isms', is but a modern label devised for comparison and
taxonomy (cf Stoicism, maenadism, and so on). Contemporaries of course made
no distinction between the 'Mysteries' as an institution in the socio-cultural scene
and the 'mysteries' as the peculiar sacred business or 'religion' of that institution.
The conventions of modern English orthography (initial capital versus initial
lower-case) allow me to draw this distinction. I stress that the distinction is for
hermeneutic purposes only. The 'mysteries' (lower-case 'm') are inseparable from
the 'Mysteries' (capital 'M'), and it is senseless to look for a point where the one
starts and the other leaves off

'What do you mean by "religion"?' is a fair question, to which I shall return
three rather different answers. First, by 'religion' I mean what the theologian Gerd
Theissen means by 'religion' in his book The Religion of the Earliest Churches
(1999). Let me set this out formally:

2 Interpreting the Mysteries

The Mithraic religion (i.e. the 'mysteries' of Mithras) : the institution of the
Mithras cult (i.e. the 'Mysteries' of Mithras) (Beck) :: 'The religion of the
earliest churches' : 'earliest churches' (Theissen).

This is a relational definition. I am also in sympathy with Theissen's own working
definition of religion as a cultural sign language which promises a gain in life by
corresponding to an ultimate reality', with the important proviso that the
'ultimate reality' is subjective: 'the statement . . . merely takes up the way in
which the religions understand themselves; it does not expect anyone to adopt
this understanding' (1999: 2).

My second answer is to say what I do not mean by 'religion'. As will become
clear soon enough, I do not mean a 'faith or a 'belief system'. That is the
old 'package deal' approach. It never was appropriate to ancient paganisms,
even to the mystery cults. Few now accept its applicability to very early
forms of Christianity. As a model it is a retrojection from later times of creed
and dogma.

For my third answer I turn to an ancient expert on religion, Plutarch of
Chaeronea, writing at the turn of the first and second centuries ce. In his essay
on Isis, her cult (mostly in Egypt), and her theological meaning, Plutarch
describes the 'mysteries' of Isis as the gift of the goddess {On Isis and Osiris 27,
trans. Gwyn Griffith):

Nor did she allow the contests and struggles which she had undertaken, and her many
deeds of wisdom and bravery, to be engulfed in oblivion and silence, but into the most
sacred rites she infused images, suggestions and representations of her experiences at that time
(alia tais hagiotatais anamixasa teletais eikonas kai hyponoias kai mimemata ton tote
pathematon), and so she consecrated at once a pattern (didagmd) of piety and an
encouragement (paramythion) to men and women overtaken by similar misfortunes.
(Emphasis added)

Eikonas kai hyponoias kai mimemata. I propose to treat the 'religion' or 'mysteries'
of the Mithras cult as a system of (literally) 'likenesses and underthoughts and
imitations' apprehended and realized by the initiate as the gift of Mithras. Just as
'likenesses' include but are not limited to material icons, so 'imitations' include
but are not limited to mimetic rituals. As for the 'underthoughts', 'mental
representations' best approximates the sense in which I take the term. My
study of the 'religion' of the Mithras cult is thus a study in cognition, a study of
how the initiate gets to know his mysteries in the context of the life and physical
environment of the mithraeum, the 'cave' in which he and his cult brothers
assembled.

The scholarly consensus is that the Mithraic mysteries were coterminous with
the cult of Mithras; in other words, that wherever Mithraists met in a mithraeum,
there too Mithraic mysteries were celebrated. To some this may seem self-evident,
true only as part of a definition and hence trivial: Mithraism was a mystery cult;
obviously, then, it had its mysteries and was nothing without them.

Interpreting the Mysteries 3

The ubiquity of its mysteries, however, is precisely what distinguishes Mith-
raism from the other 'mystery cults'. The mysteries of Isis were not coterminous
with Isism, which was a much broader, more multiform phenomenon altogether.
Initiation into a mystery, such as we read about in the eleventh book of the
Metamorphoses of Apuleius, was but an option — and an option which we cannot
assume was on offer in all or even most Isiac communities. The same is true of the
other so-called 'mystery cults'.

Mithraism's distinctiveness in this regard is stated forcefully and without
qualification by Giulia Sfameni Gasparro in an important study of the cult of
Cybele and Attis, where it is all the more telling because the Mithraic mysteries
are not there her primary concern (1985: p. xiv): 1 'it [Roman Mithraism]
constitutes an organic and autonomous religious context which had so entirely
assumed a mystery "shape" that, of all the cults with an initiatory-esoteric
structure in Antiquity, this alone deserves to be defined as a "mystery religion".'

I shall begin, in Chapter 2, with a critical look at twentieth-century approaches
to the interpretation of the Mithraic mysteries. For the most part, these follow in,
or react against, a tradition set by Franz Cumont in his magisterial two-volume
study of the cult at the close of the nineteenth century (Cumont 1896, 1899).
For all the gains in our understanding of the Mithraic mysteries effected in — or in
opposition to — the Cumontian tradition, we sense that hermeneutics has now
reached something of a dead end. This is as true of the relatively recent
astronomical/astrological interpretations (Beck 2004c: 235-49) as of the more
conservative approaches. As a consequence of this hermeneutic failure, a narrow
positivism has in some quarters replaced interpretation. Hard facts about the
cult, its membership, and its physical remains are valued above the interpretation
of its mysteries, a venture which is deemed at best 'speculative' (Clauss 1990*2,
2000) and at worst mere invention, the misattribution of high theology to
unsophisticated folk manifestly incapable of sustaining it (Swerdlow 1991). In
Chapters 2 to 4, then, we shall explore the shortcomings of the traditional
hermeneutics, especially in its heuristic procedure and in the classic approach
to deciphering doctrine by way of the cult myth and the iconography of the
monuments which carry the myth.

In particular, I shall identify five problems with the traditional approach. In
ascending order of seriousness these are: first, an undervaluing of the admittedly
very small body of literary testimony to the mysteries in favour of an almost
exclusive concentration on the monumental, that is, iconographic, testimony;

1 Sfameni Gasparro's study of the Cybele/Attis cult has acquired additional significance in that it
was used by J. Z. Smith (1990: 126—9) to establish, for purposes of comparison with early
Christianities, a paradigm of the pagan mystery cults as uniformly 'locative' (this-worldly) rather
than 'utopian' (other-worldly). In effect, by making an exception of Mithraism, Sfameni Gasparro
disallows Smith's extension of her description of the Cybele/Attis cult as a paradigm for all ancient
mysteries (see Beck 2000: 174, n. 135). For the full account of her views on Mithraism qua mystery
cult, see Sfameni Gasparro 1979c.

4 Interpreting the Mysteries

secondly, an undervaluing of the design of the mithraeum, in comparison to the
iconography of the 'figured monuments' (monuments figure's), 2 as a store and
expression of ideological meaning; thirdly, an assumption — albeit a waning
one — that doctrine is the primary object of the heuristic quest; fourthly, as a
complement to the third problem, the positivist assumption that, absent doctrine,
the mysteries cannot have been a serious and sophisticated cognitive enterprise;
fifthly, the total disregard of semantics and semiotics, a failure to ask not merely
what the iconography means but also how it means. 3 And not just the iconog-
raphy; the design of the mithraeum too, and of the rituals enacted there.

In fairness, one cannot fault an interpretation for failing to take into account
methods which lay beyond its time horizon. So rather than speak of a sixth
deficiency, I shall list as 'an opportunity' the availability of new methods pio-
neered by cognitive science, especially in anthropology and psychology, during
the last decade or so. More on this later.

From Chapter 5 onwards I shall propose a new hermeneutics based on a new
heuristic procedure. In place of the hermeneutics of doctrine, I shall offer an
interpretation of the mysteries as a system of symbols, both complex and orderly,
apprehended by the initiates in cult life and especially in ritual. Indeed, to
experience the mysteries, I shall argue, was precisely to apprehend the symbols.
At least, that is the most fruitful way I now see of describing the mysteries.

As a banner text for this enterprise we might take a phrase from a passage of
Origen, Contra Celsum 1.12. Origen claims that a distinction which he drew
within Egyptian religion between the approaches of the wise (sophon) and the
vulgar (idioton) is valid also for the 'Persians' (by whom he means the Mithraists).
The 'mysteries' (teletai) of the Persians, he says, 'are cultivated rationally by the
erudite but realized symbolically by common, rather superficial persons {par' hois
eisi teletai, presbeuomenai men logikos hypo ton par' autois logidn, symbolikos de
ginomenai hypo ton par' autois pollon kai epipolaioteron)' (trans. Chadwick). My
aim is not to show that the rank and file got it right while their betters got it
wrong — for that would be to accept the distinction between the two types of
initiate at face value — but rather that mysteries 'come into being via their
symbols' and are apprehended in that form by their initiates, both high and low.

Interpreting the mysteries of Mithras as a system of symbols inevitably
places me in a particular anthropological camp, the symbolist camp, 4 and from
my perspective the most important proponent of the interpretation of cultures
and their religions as systems of symbols is Clifford Geertz (1973). My new
hermeneutics will be unashamedly Geertzian — which reveals that it is 'new' only

2 For want of a better, I use a literal translation of Cumont's term for the sculptures and frescos
which carry the iconography.

3 If the author were to be brought to trial on these charges, he would plead guilty to the third. Of
a fault more usually imputed to him, the extravagance of his astronomical interpretations, he
remains entirely unrepentant.

4 Catherine Bell (1997: 61—92) has a good survey of the symbolists.

Interpreting the Mysteries 5

in its application to Classics. 5 To an anthropologist it will be very old news
indeed.

Before attempting to apply the new hermeneutics to the mysteries in any
detail, I shall postulate some fundamental principles of the Mithraic mysteries to
direct and control our analysis of the symbol system. Obviously, I shall not
backtrack and propose these principles as Mithraic 'doctrines'. Rather, they are
what the anthropologist Roy Rappaport, in an important study which was the
culmination of his life's work (1999), called the ultimate sacred postulates' of a
religion, and Gerd Theissen, in his work of the same year (1999), 6 called a
religion's 'axioms'. Since 'axiom' is the simpler term, I shall use it, remarking that
in this context it loses, at least for the secular scholar, its implications of 'logical
deduction from'.

Although they are known to their religion's members and are usually explicit,
axioms are not generally understood by them as a limited set. As such, they are
strictly a scholar's hermeneutic device. Axioms' are the overarching truths of a
religion which ultimately sanctify, and so sanction, the thoughts, the words, the
deeds, of its members thinking, speaking, and acting within the context of that
religion. They are obvious, simple, and often tautologous or merely definitional.
Generally, they are neither verifiable nor falsifiable, and they are invalidated not
by argument but only by the death of the religion in question. In this sense, all
Mithraic axioms are now invalid because there are no Mithraists left to live by
them. An example, often cited by Rappaport, 7 of a religious axiom is the Jewish
Shema ('Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One'), words which are
ideally the first a child learns and the last the dying hope to utter. Theissen (1999:
271-307, esp. 273) finds just two axioms for the early Christian churches,
covenantal monotheism (inherited of course from Judaism) and acceptance of
Jesus as the effective redeemer, the latter encapsulated in the saying 'Christ is
Lord'.

For the Mithraic mysteries I shall propose, likewise, just two axioms (ultimate
sacred postulates):

1. deus sol invictus mithras. As every ancient Mithraist once knew
(presumably it was explained to the illiterate), and as every modern student
of Mithraism now knows, this is the god's cult title and the normal formula
for dedications; it establishes that the religion's effective power is a god, is

the SUN, is UNCONQUERED, is MITHRAS.

5 'No work has appeared so far which applies the theory of Geertz to any Greco-Roman religion
(Segal 1989: 155). An exception, in spirit if not in explicit alignment, might be Gordon 1980£.

6 Theissen, as the subtitle of his book ('creating a symbolic world 1 ) makes explicit, also aligns
himself with the symbolist tradition. Mithraism, however, was demonstrably the more literal
'symbol system'; for while early Christianity may by metaphor be called 'a marvellous cathedral of
signs' (Theissen 1999: 306), the mithraeum was designed and constructed, literally and physically,
as a symbol-equipped 'image of the universe' (Porphyry, De antro nympharum 6).

7 1999: see index s. 'Judaism, Shema .

6 Interpreting the Mysteries

2. 'harmony of tension in opposition'. This axiom is presented here as
it appears in Porphyry De antro nympharum 29, at the conclusion of a list of
fundamental oppositions (e.g. night and day): palintonos he harmonie kai
toxeuei dia ton enantion. It was originally a saying of Heraclitus (Fr. 5 1
DK). Elsewhere (Beck 2000: 167-71) I have argued that it was the
Mithraists who adapted it and integrated it with the list of opposed
pairs. 8 However, the principal expression of this axiom of 'harmony of
tension in opposition' in the Mithraic mysteries is the pair of images of the
torchbearing divinities: Cautes with his raised torch and Cautopates with
his lowered torch. 9

These two axioms find expression in an indeterminate number of motifs (the
term, the concept, and the relation of 'motifs' to 'axioms' are Theissen's — 1999:
271—82, 290—1). Examples of an important motif in the Mithraic mysteries
would be descent and ascent.

I further propose that axioms and motifs operate in various domains. Four
domains are particularly germane to the Mithraic mysteries: (1) the sacred story,
the deeds of Mithras; (2) the cosmos; (3) the sublunary world; (4) the destiny of
human souls, and in particular the souls of the initiates of Mithras.

These four domains are not mutually exclusive. Obviously, the sublunary
world is a part of the cosmos. Thus domain 2 contains domain 3; and, in
accordance with ancient cosmology, domain 3 is at rest at the centre of domain 2,
which moves in a complex dance around it.

Furthermore, 'domain' is not intended solely in the literal sense of an area — or,
since we are dealing with a three-dimensional universe, a volume of space in
which activities take place and power is exercised. The cosmos and the sublunary
world (domains 2 and 3) are clearly domains of that sort, but the Mithras story
and the destiny of human souls (domains 1 and 4) are clearly not. Rather, the
latter are, as it were, envelopes for divine and human actions, actions which take
place in cosmic or earthly space. They have a temporal dimension, but not
one that is reducible to dating on any earthly continuum of linear time. As to
the relating of domains, much of the narrative of the first and fourth domains has
to do with bridging the second and third domains, the terrestrial with the
celestial or cosmic.

8 I also argued that the image of Mithras as bowman is an expression of this axiom, as is the
image on the Mainz ritual vessel of the cult Father miming the archery of Mithras in an act of
initiation (Beck 2000: 149-54, 167-71).

9 It may be objected that with the second axiom I am crudely mistaking the medium for the
message. Many would argue (Levi-Straussian structuralists, for example) that eliciting and recon-
ciling oppositions is simply the way in which religions and other socio-cultural systems work. True
enough, but my point will be that in the Mithraic mysteries, untypically, the oppositions are
displayed on the surface — literally so in the iconography — and are so omnipresent and explicitly
structured that 'harmony of tension in opposition' may reasonably be claimed as an axiom.

Interpreting the Mysteries 7

The symbol system conveying the axioms and motifs of Mithraism in their
several domains are manifested concretely in three distinctive structures: (1) the
physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony (with its occasional reverse,
the banquet scene, and other peripheral scenes); (2) the physical structure of
the mithraeum; (3) the organizational structure of the seven grades. I shall pay
particular attention to the first and second of these structures because, unlike the
third, they are attested ubiquitously in the Mysteries.

What you will not find in these chapters is a comprehensive reconstruction
of Mithraic theology and other beliefs; or of the myth cycle in all its
episodes. Those goals, which dominated much of twentieth-century Mithraic
scholarship, I no longer consider either achievable or, for that matter, worth
pursuing.

I shall distinguish four modes in which, singly or concurrently, the symbol
system of the Mithraic mysteries could be apprehended by its initiates: (1) ritual
action; (2) the perception of meaningful iconography; (3) the giving and receiv-
ing of words (logia, explications, teaching, esoteric epigraphic phrases, etc.);
(4) ethical behaviour consonant with the mysteries (e.g. Mithraic Lions behave
in an esoterically appropriate leonine way). The first three modes are esoteric;
they characterize types of internal behaviour within the cult and (literally) inside
the mithraeum. The last is more public; presumably, one is expected to behave in
an ethically appropriate fashion not just to one's cult brethren but also in one's
wider social relations.

Further, I shall argue throughout, but specifically in Chapters 8 and 9, that the
Mithraic mysteries, across their axioms, motifs, domains, structures, and modes,
communicated symbolically in a peculiar idiom. This idiom is a form or jargon of
one of Graeco-Roman culture's most pervasive languages, the language of as-
tronomy and astrology. Partly to avoid the clumsy repetition of those two
constituents, and partly because a new or at any rate radically different concept
requires a new term, I shall call this idiom 'star- talk'.

By 'star-talk I do not intend merely talk in words or symbols about the stars.
I intend also, following the ancients' own conception of the stars as language
signs and the heavens as text, the talk o/the stars. From the ancient point of view,
this is the primary celestial language of which the discourses of astronomy,
astrology, and astral symbolism such as we find in the Mithraic mysteries are
earthly replications. Primary star-talk is thus a highly peculiar language, in that
the celestial bodies which are its signs and signifiers are themselves also its
speakers, holding discourse in and by their rotations and revolutions. And if
not they, then the power or powers who move them.

From the modern scientific perspective, of course, primary star-talk does not
exist: the stars are without mind or meaning, and so do not and cannot
communicate. Here, however, what science tells us can and cannot transpire in
the physical heavens is of less relevance than the construction placed upon
the physical heavens by the human mind in the particular cultural context of

8 Interpreting the Mysteries

Graeco-Roman antiquity. The ancients' supposition that the stars communicate
is of far more interest to us than the scientific fact that they don't.

However, even if for analytical purposes we entertain the ancients' conception
of an astral language, a more cogent objection remains. 'Star-talk', in my
definition of the ancients' conception of it, is a language of symbols; and a
language of symbols, it has been argued by the anthropologist Dan Sperber
(1975), is an oxymoron: symbols are not language signs. Consequently, before
I can deploy 'star- talk' in my description of the Mithraic mysteries, I have to clear
what one might call 'Sperber's bar'. I must show not only that star-talk was
deemed a language by the ancients, but also that as a (to us) imaginary language it
does indeed function as a language on criteria that Sperber set as the necessary
conditions for language status. Specifically, I must show that astral symbols, as
deployed in the Mithraic mysteries, can and do function as language signs.

From my past interest in interpreting certain aspects of the mysteries by
reference to Graeco-Roman astronomy and astrology, a sceptical reader might
suspect that I am ushering back in through the back door as astral 'language' the
same disreputable creature whom I have expelled through the front door as astral
'doctrine'. In a sense, that is indeed what I am doing. Nevertheless, I plead that
the creature has undergone a reformation. No longer is it the 'astral truths of the
mysteries'; rather, it is the 'truths of the mysteries astrally expressed'. It is now
medium, not message.

Of the five problems of traditional Mithraic hermeneutics, I identified as the
most serious 'the total disregard of semantics and semiotics, a failure to ask not
merely what the iconography means but also how it means. And not just the
iconography; the design of the mithraeum too, and of the rituals enacted there.'
The concept of star-talk as a language and as the proper idiom of the Mithraic
mysteries is intended to remedy that deficiency. It will enable us to translate
traditional substantive ('what') questions into modal ('how') questions of com-
munication, of the giving and apprehending of signs and symbols, and ultimately
of cognition itself. In posing and answering the old questions in this novel way,
we shall actually be traversing much the same traditional terrain of cult theology,
cosmology, and salvation.

2. AWORD ON ONTOLOGY

Some of our categories are obviously anchored in the actual world: their matter
or, rather, propositions about their matter are susceptible, at least in principle, to
empirical verification. This is mainly so of matter which falls within the categories
of 'structure' and 'mode'. The categories themselves are no more than heuristic
and hermeneutic organizing principles. Accordingly, my statement that the mys-
teries were conveyed and given expression in three structures and four modes is
actually just a claim (non-factual, hence neither verifiable nor falsifiable) that the

Interpreting the Mysteries 9

mysteries can be re-described most effectively in terms of those categories so
delimited. However, what you find brigaded under the banners of the three
structures and four modes are facts; or at least the propositions which assert
them can be empirically verified or falsified. It is a fact, verifiable from the extant
exemplars, that there were Mithraic icons and mithraea designed so and not
otherwise. It is a fact that there was a (probably non-ubiquitous) hierarchy of
grades ordered so and not otherwise. It is a fact that the initiates performed certain
actions, and not others, of a sort which we call 'ritual'.

In the preceding sentence I have deliberately problematized 'ritual'. It would have
been all too easy to say simply, 'it is a fact that the initiates performed certain rituals
rather than others'. That, however, would beg an enormous onto logical question.
What makes a particular action a ritual? Or more precisely, how does one verify/
falsify empirically the proposition that such-and-such a piece of business is a 'ritual',
for example a 'sacrifice' rather than routine butchery? Of course we all 'know the
difference' — or think we do — but how can we confirm it empirically on real-world
criteria and without appeal either to our own modern scholarly taxonomies (as
above) or, more dangerously, to a meta-realm of 'the sacred'?

The problem is well posed by Dan Sperber (1996: 24), whose solution we shall
follow. It is the representations of sacrifice in the minds of those who perform and
witness the deed, not the sacrifice qua sacrifice, that belong in our common world
where empirically verifiable/falsifiable propositions can be made about them.
Whether or not one wants to reduce these representations to states or changes
in the neural circuitry of the brain, 10 the fact remains that for every representa-
tion there must necessarily be a corresponding neural event. These events,
whether mental or neural or both, occur in the course of nature in the empirically
accessible world.

Ontologically, according to Sperber (1996), cultural phenomena, of which
religions constitute a set, are clusters of representations of two types, 'mental' and
'public'. Mental representations are obviously those discussed in the preceding
paragraph. Public representations are the expression of mental representations in
the common world: the observable ritual, the visible icon, the legible text. Of all
these representations, mental as well as public, one can state that they are/were so
and not otherwise. Those propositions, in principle if not in practice, are subject
to empirical verification/falsification. 11

10 Sperber 's explicir materialism points him that way (pp. 9—31), but there is no need to follow.
His theory of representations, as I employ it here, is compatible with a dualist position, provided one
accepts that every mental representation is physically anchored in a corresponding neural state or
event and is hence part of an individual's physical history; hence an event in the material history of
the world; hence accessible in principle to verification/falsification: either it did happen or it did not
happen.

11 'Of course, we have records of only a few of the public versions and none of the mental ones,
but complementing observations with hypotheses about unobserved — and even unobservable —
entities is plain normal science' (Sperber 1996: 27).

10 Interpreting the Mysteries

Consequently, under modes' I speak not of Mithraic 'ritual' and so on per se,
but of the apprehension' of the Mithraic 'symbol system' in and by 'ritual action',
in and by 'the perception of meaningful iconography', in and by 'the giving and
receiving of words', in and by esoterically appropriate 'ethical behaviour'. What
I seek to describe and to analyse is the interplay of those mental and public
representations the sum of which constituted the mysteries.

Like 'structures' and 'modes', my categories of 'axioms', 'motifs', and 'domains'
are in and of themselves just scholars' heuristic and hermeneutic devices for
ordering representations. But they too are grounded in the actual world. Our
postulated 'axiom' deus sol invictus mithras is also a dedicatory formula,
hence a public representation in Sperber's sense, existing openly in the actual
world. Moreover, it was a public representation only because it was a (complex)
mental representation in the minds/brains of the initiates. Precisely because we
suppose it a definitive representation of Mithras we identify it as an 'axiom'.

In sum, we may say that ontologically all axioms, motifs, domains, structures,
and modes, are, or are reducible to, mental and/or public representations or
clusters of representations (as defined by Sperber 1996).

3. TEMPLATE FOR A RE-DESCRIPTION OF THE
MITHRAIC MYSTERIES

In this section I lay out in summary form the re-description of the Mithraic
mysteries developed over the preceding sections.

The description comprises six propositions, A— F. Each proposition except the
last (F) has alternative openings (Al and A2, Bl and B2, etc.). This is to reflect
different perspectives: the first line represents the mysteries as an autonomous
system acting on the initiate; the second line represents the mysteries from the
initiate's point of view as something apprehended and accepted. Obviously, my
preference is for the latter, for it captures the interplay of mental and public
representations of which the mysteries, as a matter of fact, consisted.

Elsewhere (Beck 2004c 45—9) I have presented a third alternative which better
reflects the ancient way of looking at things: it represents the mysteries from the
divine perspective as the gift of the god, mediated in part by a 'prophet' or 'law-
giver' ('Zoroaster' for the Mithraists) and received by the initiate. 12 Unsurpassed
as a paradigm for this third way is Plutarch's account of the transmission of her
mysteries by Isis in the form of 'likenesses and underthoughts and imitations'
{On Isis and Osiris 27), a passage we examined at the beginning of this chapter. 13

12 An imaginary first-person 'Mithraic aretalogy' on the Isiac model is interleaved with the
summary description presented in the second, initiate-centred form only.

13 Compare the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 270- 4, 470—82, on Demeter's institution of her
mysteries and her mandate to the Eleusinian princes.

Interpreting the Mysteries 1 1

A description of the Mithraic mysteries

Al. The mysteries give symbolic expression to . . .

A2. In the mysteries, the initiate apprehends symbolically . . .

two axioms or ultimate sacred postulates:

1. DEUS SOL INVICTUS MITHRAS

2. 'Harmony of tension in opposition.'

B 1 . These axioms are conveyed . . .
B2. The initiate experiences these axioms . . .
in an indeterminate number of motifs:
e.g. the motif of descent and ascent.

CI. Axioms and themes operate . . .

C2. The initiate apprehends the axioms and themes . . .

in one or more of four domains:

1 . the sacred story, the deeds of Mithras

2. the cosmos

3. the sublunary world

4. the destiny of human (especially initiates') souls.

D 1 . The complexes of symbols conveying the axioms and motifs of the myster-
ies in their various domains are manifested concretely. . .

D2. The initiate apprehends the symbol complexes conveying the axioms and
motifs of the mysteries in their various domains . . .

on structured sites; in the mysteries there are three principal and distinctive

structures:

1 . the physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony (with its reverse = the
banquet scene, plus peripheral scenes)

2. the physical structure of the mithraeum

3. the organizational structure of the seven grades
(note: only the first two structures are attested ubiquitously).

El. The symbols are activated . . .

E2. The initiate apprehends the symbols . . .

in one or more of four modes:

1 . ritual action

2. the perception of meaningful iconography

3. the giving and receiving of words (logia, explications, teaching, esoteric
epigraphic formulae)

4. ethical behaviour consonant with the mysteries (e.g. Mithraic Lions behave
in an esoterically appropriate leonine way).

F. The mysteries' common symbolic idiom across axioms, motifs, domains,
structures, and modes is the language of astronomy/ astrology or star-talk.

12 Interpreting the Mysteries

4. ON COMPARISONS

I am confident that this new heuristic/hermeneutic approach and template for a
re-description of the Mithraic mysteries, developed as they are from recent
initiatives in anthropology (Rappaport, Sperber) and Christian origins (Theis-
sen), will allow us to make more interesting, deeper, and better-nuanced com-
parisons than heretofore. The making of interesting comparisons, I agree with the
distinguished scholar of ancient religions, Jonathan Z. Smith (1990), is at the
heart of the enterprise of the study of religion. The importance of Smith's
comparative project has been endorsed and its centrality emphasized in the
recent work of a senior New Testament and Christian origins scholar, Burton
Mack (2001: 59-80)."

Accordingly, you will encounter here comparisons not only with the systems of
Christianity in its early forms, 15 but also with those of cultures closer to us in
time and as distant as the indigenous Chamula of southern Mexico (Gossen
1979); also with those of certain contemporary Western 'cults' (in the modern
sense), in particular the celestially oriented cults of the Solar Temple and
Heaven's Gate, groups which achieved notoriety in the 1990s for the bizarre
murder-suicides of their initiates. 16

Wide comparisons over space, time, and levels of economic and scientific
sophistication help us both to familiarize the exotic and — no less important — to
exoticize the familiar. We aim to create, as it were, a level playing-field for all
mysteries, in particular one on which those of Mithras are not set at a disadvan-
tage with those of Christ. Though no longer in the spirit of Christian triumph-
alism, we classicists still tend to overprivilege the latter, especially on the
intellectual plane. We may (or may not) concede some intellectual value to the
ancient philosophical allegorizations of the pagan mysteries. But by and large we
treat the real-life initiates as an intellectually scruffy lot, reserving our respect, if
not our liking, for the minds of their Christian rivals. 'J erusalem ' might have
wanted little to do with Athens', but we extend it honorary Athenian citizenship
nonetheless. Not so the pagan mysteries.

14 Mack's Christian origins project aims at an explanation of Christian myth-making which
disengages the extant texts and their predecessors (e.g. 'Q') from the 'historical Jesus'. As a result, his
reconstructed early Christianities approximate more closely to the pagan mysteries than did previous
paradigms of Christianity at its genesis. Welcome to our pagan field, where the historical Mithras
never was a problem!

15 For some novel comparisons, made possible by the discovery and identification of previously
unknown Mithraic rituals on the Mainz cult vessel, see Beck 2000 (171-8).

16 Beck 1998^: 343. Cf. J. Z. Smith's well-known comparison of the Jonestown cult with
Dionysiac maenadism (1982).

Interpreting the Mysteries 1 3

5. ON COGNITION

As one of the shortcomings of the traditional interpretations of the Mithraic and
other ancient mysteries, we have identified the lack of adequate semiotics and
semantics, specifically of a paradigm of how symbols in the mysteries convey
meaning. To that semantic deficiency we added the absence of any cognitive
theory, that is, a paradigm of how the initiates apprehended the symbol systems of
their mysteries. Classical scholarship here tends to take a commonsensical
approach (as it does all too often), supposing it sufficient that the initiates
believed their beliefs, that they thought their thoughts (if the mystery is allowed
intelligent and intelligible content), 17 and that the rest was affect or more-or-less
edifying emotion.

Since we postulate that Mithraism was a serious cognitive enterprise, it is
incumbent on us to have at least a working paradigm of cognition in the context
of religion. Fortunately, the new cognitive science of religion (CSR) provides just
such a paradigm. As an approach to a particular subset of mental and cultural
phenomena, CSR is part of a more general cognitivist methodology which I shall
describe at the start of Chapter 6 when I begin to employ it in my hermeneutics.
Suffice it to say here that Dan Sperber's theory of representations, which I adopted
above, exemplifies this method. 18

A precursor of the cognitivist approach is a theory known (not very informa-
tively) as biogenetic structuralism . 19 Biogenetic structuralism proposes a model of
the operation of the human brain and the autonomous nervous system function-
ing as an integrated whole, especially in certain non-everyday situations, notably
meditation, ecstasy, and participation in ritual. It is, of course, the theory's focus
on religious states of mind and their corresponding physiological states that

17 Particularly unfortunate is the assumption that belief starts where rational thought leaves off
(e.g. Hopkins 1999: 323, asterisked note), as if the mental state of the initiate could be signalled by
little coloured lights switching on and off green for rational thought, yellow for belief, and red for
emotion. It is, perhaps, the last gasp of Platonist psychology.

18 Jensine Andresen (2001*2, 200l£) gives a good overview of the new cognitive approach in the
study of religion. See also the articles in Pyysiainen and Anttonen 2002. Apart from Dan Sperber's
works already cited (1975, 1996), the most important studies germane to our hermeneutics are by
E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley (1990), Harvey Whitehouse (2000), Pascal Boyer
(2001), and the authors/editors of the recently inaugurated 'Cognitive Science of Religion Series'
(Altamira Press): Whitehouse 2004; Pyysiainen 2004; Barrett 2004; Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004;
Whitehouse and Martin 2004. For the neural processes of the conscious brain/mind, I rely (as a rank
layman) on Gerald M. Edelman and Giulio Tononi (2000); for the evolutionary history of the same,
on Steven Mithen (1996). I here acknowledge my deep indebtedness to Luther Martin for
integrating me, quite recently, into the CSR enterprise (Beck 2004£).

19 See Laughlin 1997; Newberg and d'Aquili 1998. Of central importance is d'Aquili etal. 1979
on ritual.

14 Interpreting the Mysteries

attracted my attention. This approach too I shall describe in more detail when
I come to make use of it towards the end of Chapter 7. 20

6. SYNCHRONIC VERSUS DIACHRONIC; STRUCTURE

AND MEANING VERSUS HISTORIC CAUSE AND EFFECT;

INTERPRETATION VERSUS EXPLANATION

If one were to ask why, for example, the tauroctony is composed of a certain set of
symbols in a certain arrangement, one of two different sorts of answer may be
returned: first a synchronic answer, that the tauroctony is so and not otherwise
because it gives expression, via an apparent narrative episode, to the axioms and
certain key motifs of the Mithraic religion; secondly a diachronic answer, that the
tauroctony is so and not otherwise because it is the end product of a historical
evolution, whether of an underlying set of ideas or of the iconography itself (or
both). These two broad types of answer are not of course mutually exclusive, but
they should be kept distinct, at least conceptually. One should differentiate clearly
between an explication in terms of meaning and an explication in terms of
antecedents.

My study takes a synchronic approach. I shall attempt to explicate the
mysteries as a symbolic system in terms of the system's meaning(s) and structure.
To some extent, this is inevitable. There is simply not enough evidence to
reconstruct the development of the tauroctony (to retain that example) in the
way in which historians of Christian origins can reconstruct, through the
methods of source-, redaction-, and form-criticism, not only the development
of early Christianity's pre-canonical texts but also the earliest forms, social and
ideological, of the religion itself. In part, however, my choice of approach is
deliberate. In these chapters I am more concerned with interpreting the mysteries
than with explaining them historically in terms of cause and effect. 21

There are of course diachronic stories to be told, not only about the social
formation of the Roman Mysteries of Mithras but also about the development of
the cult's mysteries. Indeed, the whole Cumontian narrative of the transmission
of Mithra-worship from Persia to Mesopotamia to Anatolia to Rome was as

20 Here again I wish to acknowledge a debt: to Colleen Shantz (2001) for alerting me to
biogenetic structuralism and its explanatory potential. Latterly, biogenetic structuralism has evolved
into so-called 'neurotheology', a development which poses problems for the secular academic. We
shall have to face this problem when we come to it in Ch. 7, sect. 13.

21 'Interpretation and 'explanation' are technical terms in the anthropology of religion. Although
they are not mutually exclusive, scholars tend to take one route or the other. Explanations translate
or reduce a religious system into other terms; interpretations explicate the system largely in (but not
on!) its own terms. See Lawson and McCauley 1990: 12—18. Explanation is these days generally
preferred to interpretation, being deemed the more 'scientific' of the two.

Interpreting the Mysteries 1 5

much (if not more) about the creation and modification of a set of beliefs as
about the institution and transformations of a social group.

Paradoxically, to validate my synchronic account, I found that towards the end
of this study, specifically from section 1 1 of Chapter 9 and in Chapter 10,1 had
to tell an elaborate diachronic story. This, you will find, is not even about the
mysteries of Mithras, or at least not primarily so. Rather, it is the reconstructed
history of a set of astronomical and astrological — that is, 'star-talk' — concepts
and representations in which, I claim, the prehistory and origins of the mysteries
of Mithras are embedded. 22 Large though that claim is, there is fortunately no
need to say more about it here at the outset.

7. CONCLUSION

Such, then, is our hermeneutic agenda. In the next chapter we shall look at the
traditional interpretations of twentieth-century Mithraic scholarship and their
fons et origo in the great two-volume work of Franz Cumont, which appeared in
the closing years of the century before. Concurrently, we shall start to lay the
foundations of our new approach.

22 The role of the great astrologer-politician Ti. Claudius Balbillus in the story is treated in an
essay in Beck 2004f: 323-9. See also Beck 1998a, 1999, 2001, both on Balbillus and on the earlier
role of the kingdom of Commagene as the matrix of Mithraic astrology.

Old Ways: The Reconstruction of Mithraic
Doctrine from Iconography

1. A GATEWAY TO AN INTERPRETATION OF THE

MYSTERIES: PORPHYRY, DE ANTRO NYMPHARUM 6, ON

THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF THE MITHRAEUM

An exploration such as ours should have a specific point of departure, gateway
data, as it were, to use as a concrete example as one starts to address the
theoretical issues. For our gateway into the Mithraic mysteries I have chosen a
passage from Porphyry, De antro nympharum 6, on the form and function of the
mithraeum:

Porphyry, a Neoplatonist of the third century ce, here tells us two things of great
importance. In the context of a foundation legend about an archetypal
mithraeum, 1 he specifies first the esoteric significance or meaning of Mithraism's
sacred space and secondly the function of that space within its mysteries. (1) The
mithraeum is designed as, and called, a 'cave' because it is meant to represent the

1 Porphyry derives his information from a predecessor, Eubulus. Eubulus, and probably the
Mithraists too, ascribed the institution of Mithraism to the Persian sage Zoroaster. This sort of
attribution to a remote and alien sage was common in antiquity (Momigliano 1975). It is
ahistorical, although Zoroaster himself, as the prophet of Iranian Mazda-worship ('Zoroastrian-
ism'), is of course real enough. By 'Persians' Eubulus means the Mithraists, not real-life Persians.
Our passage also contains the information that the original mithraeum 'was located in the
mountains near Persia and had flowers and springs'. The reference to water is significant but does
not immediately concern us here.

Old Ways 17

universe. (2) It is an 'image of the universe' in order to realize a mystery of the
descent and return of souls.

De antro 6 is actually the sole explicit testimony from antiquity as to the intent
of Mithraism's mysteries and the means by which that intent was realized.
Porphyry moreover, was an intelligent and well-placed theoretician of contem-
porary religion, with access to predecessors' studies, now lost. 2 So his remarks,
you might think, would be an obvious entry point to an interpretation of the
mysteries.

In fact, however, De antro 6 has never been Mithraic scholarship's point of
departure. So before we set out thence, I should review the traditional route and
justify my divergence.

First, though, notice two interesting features of the passage which will recur in
our discussions: (1) The intent of the mithraeum's design is to enable initiation
into a mystery. Ritual is signalled as well as (rather than?) belief. In due course, we
shall need to look carefully at Porphyry's language and its modern explications in
order to assess the balance. (2) More obvious is the emphasis on symbols and on
symbolism as the driving mechanism for what the Mithraists accomplish in their
mithraeum: the mithraeum is an 'image' (eikona) of the universe; it is made so by
a certain disposition of 'symbols' {symbolois) within it.

2. THE TRADITIONAL ROUTE: FROM THE

ICONOGRAPHY OF THE MONUMENTS TO THE

MYTH OF MITHRAS TO THE BELIEFS OF MITHRAISTS

The heuristic royal road, opened more than a century ago by Franz Cumont
(1896, 1899), starts from the iconography of the monuments. From the monu-
ments, and especially from the icon of the bull-killing Mithras, the so-called
'tauroctony', 3 first (1) the cult myth, centred on the story of Mithras, is recon-
structed, and then (2) from that myth the cult's doctrines and beliefs are
deduced. 4

2 e.g. Eubulus, as in the present passage. 3 The term is modern.

4 Cumont did not invent this heuristic procedure entirely de novo. As we shall see, it has its roots
in antiquity; and long before Cumont early modern scholars and antiquarians had explicated the
mysteries piecemeal by interpreting the iconography of the monuments, especially the tauroctony:
see e.g. the early interpretations of the Ottaviano Zeno monument, V335, discussed in Vermaseren
1978: 8—17, pis. XI, XII). Cumont's accomplishment was (1) to collect the data of the 'monuments
figures', thus rendering the iconography amenable to systematic interpretation, and (2) to recon-
struct from the scenes on the monuments the first credible Mithras myth, postulated as the object of
the Mithraists' beliefs and the expression of their doctrines. For simplicity's sake, I concentrate here
on the story of Mithras himself. For Cumont this was but a part, albeit the central part, of a grander
story, likewise told in scenes on the monuments, involving divine powers other than Mithras.
Cumont's ultimate goal, as Richard Gordon pointed out (1975: 216), was the full theology
embodied in the totality of scenes and symbols.

18 Old Ways

This heuristic procedure involves two stages. Logically, it must indeed be so,
for one cannot deduce doctrine and belief from myth without first deciphering
the story told by the scenes on the monuments (by no means a straightforward
task, as we shall see). Nevertheless, in practice, the two parts of the programme
are usually run in tandem: meanings are deduced while the narrative is expli-
cated. Furthermore, not all of the symbolism on the monuments contributes to
the narrative, at least not in any obvious way. When that is so, the symbols are
translated directly into doctrines and beliefs with little or no reference to the
story. An example would be the explicit astrological symbolism with which the
monuments are so richly embellished.

The architecture of Cumont's fundamental study, Textes et monuments figures
relatifs aux mysteres de Mithra, makes this heuristic procedure — iconography to
story to doctrine and belief — abundantly clear. Note first, however, the emphasis
in the title: it is the 'monuments figures', those monuments which carry inter-
pretable iconography, which are privileged. The silent deficit in that title, the
mithraea, the epigraphy, and the small finds, could not be addressed as ad-
equately as the iconography until they were catalogued in a more appropriate
format half-a-century later in M. J. Vermaseren's Corpus Inscriptionum et Mon-
umentorum Religionis Mithriacae (1 956-60). 5

Although Cumont's interpretive first volume (1899) 6 starts with the literary
texts, it disposes of them in forty-four pages (pp. 3-46), only twenty-six (pp.
21-46) of which concern the Greek and Latin texts directly relevant to the Graeco-
Roman Mysteries. The monuments, in contrast, occupy 168 (pp. 53-220) out of
the remaining 174 pages (pp. 37-220) of the first part ('Critique des documents')
of this volume. 7 Even if we deduct the first seventeen pages (on the mithraea and
small finds) and the last eight ('interet artistique') of these 168, that still leaves 143
pages devoted to the iconography of the 'monuments figures', the story they tell,
and the meanings they convey. Manifestly, this is the engine of Cumont's project, a
perception confirmed when we find the very same data deployed again as 'La
doctrine des mysteres', the title of the fourth chapter in the volume's second part
('Conclusions'). As 'The Doctrine of the Mithraic Mysteries' it occupies the same
position in the popular, still current English translation of those 'Conclusions'
published as a separate book (Cumont 1903).

Among the leading twentieth-century interpreters of Mithraism, Robert Tur-
can exemplifies most transparently the continuation of Cumont's heuristic pro-
cedure. The fourth chapter of his short, general study of the cult is entitled
'L'Imagerie mithriaque', and it opens thus (Turcan 2000: 47; emphasis mine):

5 A high point in the display of the full range of the archaeological evidence is undoubtedly
Manfred Clauss's survey of the cult (1990, trans. 2000). 'Small finds' are now receiving proper
attention: see Martens and De Boe 2004, the proceedings of a conference devoted to the subject in
2001.

6 Vol. 1 was published afterVol. 2 (1896). Vol. 2 is the actual collection of texts and monuments.

7 The balance, a scant six pages, is assigned to the inscriptions.

Old Ways 19

Le mithriacisme nous est accessible surtout et directement par Viconographie. C'est dire
l'importance des monuments figures qui doivent servir de base a toute discussion sur les
origines, la formation et la signification du culte greco-romain de Mithra.

Mithraism is directly accessible to us above all through the iconography, which speaks to
the importance of the figured monuments which ought to serve as the basis of all
discussion on the origins, the formation, and the meaning of the Graeco-Roman cult
of Mithras.

There could be no clearer programmatic statement. In the ground it covers
(though not of course in its findings, which mark a real advance over those of
Cumont), 8 Turcan's chapter on 'imagerie' runs more or less parallel to Cumont's
chapter on 'doctrine'. The difference is that while Cumont's title signals the latter
part of the course and its goal, Turcan's signals the earlier part and the starting
line. In a nice symmetry, the equivalent chapter in the other of the two most
recent general surveys (Clauss 1990; English translation 2000) signals the middle
of the course, the cult myth: 'Mithras-Legende', 'The sacred narrative'.

In an article explicating an iconographically unusual detail in the banquet
scene on the reverse of the Fiano Romano tauroctony (V641), 9 Turcan spells out
this heuristic procedure more fully, but with equal clarity and with his customary
eloquence (1986: 221). I quote the passage in extenso, for we shall need to return
to it to take up various threads in its argument. Bear in mind that the strangeness
('bizarrerie') of the particular detail which he is addressing is the prompt for a
more generalized reflection on where the iconography of the monuments leads us
and how it conducts us there. Note especially the emphasis on doctrine as the end
product of the imagery of the monuments, and on the inculcation of doctrine, in a
liturgical or ritual context, as the goal of initiation into the mysteries. Note too
how iconography functions as or like a language of instruction in the transmission
of doctrine.

La bizarrerie de la representation doit tenir pour une grande part au fait quelle s'eflorce de
transcrire par une image quelque chose d'un enseignement philosophico-religieux. D'une
part, en effet, nous savons que le mithriacisme a integre, adapte certaines theories grecques,
voire certains mythes grecs . . . Et d' autre part, une caracteristique essentielle de ce culte est
qu'il se repand par l'image, moyennant une initiation et une liturgie qui comportent
l'explication rituelle des images. L'iconographie n'y a, comme on sait, aucune fin esthe-
tique. Elle se veut porteuse d'une doctrine. D'une extremite a l'autre du monde romain,
avec certaines variantes autour de figures fondamentales, elle vehicule un meme enseigne-
ment. C'est un langage a dechif&er, et Ton ne peut guere hasarder de dechiffrement qu'en

8 Mainly in the shedding of the baggage of Mazdaism, of which Cumont supposed Mithraism to
be the Roman form or expression, in favour of a more Graeco-Roman ideology; also in a heightened
attention to the cult's principal icon, the tauroctony, and to the scene of the banquet which both
follows the bull-killing in the myth cycle and serves as the charter for the cult meal.

9 For present purposes, the specific detail does not matter: in fact, it is the flames which spring up
at the base of an altar where one of the torchbearers points the head of a caduceus.

20 Old Ways

se fondant sur la semantique courante des motifs ou des attributs, en fonction de certaines
idees communes au monde greco-romain.

[The strangeness of the representation has to do in large measure with the fact that it is
trying to transcribe by an image some piece of philosophical or religious teaching. On the
one hand we know that Mithraism integrated and adapted certain Greek theories, certain
Greek myths . . . On the other hand an essential characteristic of this cult is that it spread by
means of the image, through an initiation and a liturgy which carried the ritual explication
of the images. The iconography, as we know, has no aesthetic purpose. It is meant to be the
carrier of a doctrine. From one end of the Roman world to the other, with certain variants
on fundamental figures, it conveys the same teaching. It is a language to be deciphered, and
one can only try deciphering it by relying on the then current semantics of the motifs or
attributes, in terms of certain ideas common to the Graeco-Roman world.]

3. THE MERITS AND ACHIEVEMENTS OF THE
TRADITIONAL HEURISTIC PROCEDURE

Of course there is good warrant for the traditional Cumontian procedure — were
there not, scholars would hardly have followed it for the duration of the
twentieth century. The most obvious and compelling reason is the sheer quantity
of the iconographic evidence. Notoriously, there are no extant sacred texts, other
than a few short symbola, from within the Mysteries of Mithras; and even from
the external but contemporary ancient sources which discussed or touched on the
Mysteries there are only some brief and fragmented testimonies. By contrast, an
amazing plethora of monuments with narrative scenes and other groupings of
symbols survives, mostly in the form of relief sculpture, but also in fresco and in
sculpture in the round. 10 Mithraism typically expressed itself in and through the
medium of the visual arts, just as early Christianity typically expressed itself in
and through the medium of the spoken and, before long, the written word.
Accordingly, it was as proper and as inevitable that Mithraic scholarship, or at
least that part of it concerned with interpreting the mysteries, should start with
the monuments and their iconography as that the scholarship of early Christian-
ity should start with New Testament criticism. 11 One begins, rightly, where the
data is thickest, most voluminous, and most complex.

10 The abundance of the archaeological evidence, in stark contrast to the paucity of the literary
remains, is stressed by Clauss (2000: pp. xxi, 15).

1 ' More precisely, with the criticism of early canonical and extra-canonical literature and its
postulated antecedents (e.g. the 'Q' gospel) in both narrative and non-narrative forms. The aim is
twofold: (1) to identify and differentiate the earliest forms of Christianity (ideological as well as
social), and (2) (for those who maintain that the goal is achievable) to isolate and characterize 'the
historical Jesus'. The second of those two quests has no counterpart in Mithraic scholarship,
although a search for Mithraism's actual human founder(s) is a legitimate historiographical endeav-
our (Beck 1998). It is worth noting that these days the scholarship of Christian origins does not
work exclusively with and from the written record. Archaeology too plays a substantial role: see e.g.
the use of recent archaeological evidence from the Lower Galilee in Crossan 1998: 209—35.

Old Ways 21

Secondly, focusing first on the iconography of the monuments, and in par-
ticular on the icon of the bull-killing Mithras, places the emphasis where, one
senses intuitively, it belongs. The tauroctony is one of Mithraism's few defining
essentials. Every Mithraic group, as far as one can tell, displayed one in a
prominent location, usually in a special niche at the end of their mithraeum.
Indeed, it was the icon's presence there that privileged that part of their sacred
space. Often, the mithraeum was embellished elsewhere with secondary exem-
plars of the tauroctony, 12 and there seem also to have been small portable
versions, perhaps for private devotion. 13 Since it was manifestly the focus of
the Mithraists' attention, surely it ought to be the primary focus of the scholar's
attention too; and if the primary focus, why not the heuristic point of departure?

The argument for the centrality of the tauroctony is sound, and in fact there
are no nay-sayers. Again, an analogy with the interpretation of Christianity
(though not in its most antique forms) is germane. The siting of the image of
the crucified Jesus in the sanctuary above the altar persists as a norm in Western
church design from the Middle Ages onwards. From it one could infer, even in
default of all other evidence, the centrality of the crucifixion in the Christian
system. So it is with the image of the bull-killing Mithras and the event which it
both represents and proclaims. Although, for good reason, I select a different
entry point into the mysteries, we must and shall pay no less attention to the icon
of the tauroctony.

Thirdly, the iconography conducts us, both directly and via the myth, to
Mithraic praxis. The tauroctony in relief form sometimes carries on its reverse a
second scene, in which Mithras and the Sun god feast together. 14 The two gods
recline on the hide of the slaughtered bull. Their banquet, then, is manifestly the
next episode in the myth. It follows immediately on the bull-killing. But is it just
an event of myth, a culmination in a story told of the gods? Again, it is the
iconography, not the texts, that tells us otherwise. The banquet of the gods, so the
monuments make clear, was replicated in the cult meal which the initiates
celebrated together on the ubiquitous side-benches which are the mithraeum's
defining feature. In other words, the story of the banquet of Mithras and Sol is
the charter myth of the initiates' cult meal.

In an analogous fashion, the story of Jesus's 'last supper' is or, more precisely,
became the charter myth for the Christian cult meal and the liturgy of the
eucharist which developed from it. The difference is that while we discern the
relation of myth to ritual in certain forms of early Christianity from the literary

12 Vermaseren lists over fifty as certainly or most probably from the same mithraeum at
Sarmizegetusa (Dacia), V2027-2140.

13 e.g. the roundel, only 7.5 cm in diameter, found in the Caesarea mithraeum but likely of
Danubian provenance (Bull 1978: 79-83; pi. II, fig. 4). On small and miniature icons, see Gordon
(2004).

14 e.g. V1083 (Heddernheim I). The scene also occurs on separate reliefs; also as a side-scene on
complex tauroctonies. See Beck 1984: 2010 f, 2083 f.

22 Old Ways

sources (i.e., the gospels, their antecedents, and the Pauline epistles), 15 for
Mithraism we discern it from the iconography, notably from those representa-
tions of the banquet which elide the celestial and mythic event into the terrestrial
and actual. This they do by intimating in one way or another that the partici-
pants and attendants are not only deities (Mithras, Sol, Cautes, Cautopates) but
also initiates of various grades in the hierarchy. The banquet transpires at both
levels or in both worlds simultaneously: it is the heavenly feast of Sol and
Mithras, but it is also the feast of their earthly surrogates, the Father and the
Sun-Runner, with Mithraic Lions and Ravens in attendance. 16 From the icon-
ography, then, we may reasonably deduce that the Mithraic cult feast was not
simply a meal shared and enjoyed by the initiates — though it was certainly that
too and never less than that 17 — but also a sacrament, if by 'sacrament' we may
understand a ceremony whose participants understand it to reach, through
symbols, into a world beyond that in which it was performed.

Starting, then, from the iconography, one can establish first the link between
two crucial events in the Mithras myth, the bull-killing and the banquet, and
then the link, which is a charter relationship, between the events of myth and
Mithraism's normative ritual. 18 These are huge pieces of the mysteries. If the
iconography can guide us so far, why backtrack to a different point of departure?

Finally, the iconography, unlike the texts, never imparts erroneous informa-
tion. In its own bailiwick it is incontrovertible. Its data are self-evidently authen-
tic. One cannot argue, for example, with the fact that the tauroctony regularly
includes a dog, a snake, a scorpion, and a raven. That, manifestly, is how the
Mithraists decided to compose their icon. It is simply so and not otherwise. What
better base, then, from which to launch one's hermeneutics?

4. THE SHORTCOMINGS OF THE TRADITIONAL
HEURISTIC PROCEDURE

Unfortunately, iconography's bailiwick does not extend very far. As soon as we
start to interpret the iconography, to say what it 'means', we enter the domain of
error, or at least of potential error. There is of course a considerable zone of

'5 Mark 14: 22-5, Matt. 26: 26-9, Luke 22: 17-19, 1 Cor. 11: 23-5. I subscribe to the widely
held modern view that this 'charter' was imposed, in the light of the crucifixion/resurrection, on a pre-
existing common meal in the Jesus movement (Crossan 1998: 423—44; Theissen 1999: 121—60).

16 For the relevant monuments see Clauss 2000: 108-13; also Beck 1984: 2010 f., 2028, 2083 f.
In the Konjic banquet scene (VI 896) only a Lion and a Raven can be identified with certainty from
among the four attendant figures as grade-holders (Turcan 1999: 225—7).

17 According to J. D. Crossan (1998: 427, on 1 Cor. 11: 17-22), Paul upbraids his Corinthian
followers on precisely this point: that the well-off Christians had perverted the common meal by
admitting their poorer members only to token communion, not to shared food. Certain it is that the
eucharist did eventually develop into a purely symbolic meal, a mistake — if it is a mistake — which
the Mithraists apparently avoided.

18 'La liturgie ordinaire', as Turcan rightly calls it (2000: 78).

Old Ways 23

agreement in the interpretation of the monuments (for example, on the intent of
the banquet scene, as discussed above), and little likelihood that the consensus of
scholars there is completely mistaken. However, this clear zone of agreement
soon gives place to thickets where the intent of the iconography is by no means
self-evident and the inferences which are hazarded can at best be no more than
plausible. 19

Here an ancient text such as Porphyry's De antro has a clear advantage. The
intent of the mithraeum's symbolism may or may not be what Porphyry says it is,
but at least we are listening to a contemporary of the Mysteries making the
inference, and there is a good chance that he is drawing (albeit at second hand)
on sources within the Mysteries. This likelihood I shall discuss in due course. In
contrast, no ancient authority tells us why, for example, the tauroctony regularly
includes a dog, a snake, a scorpion, and a raven. We are on our own — though not
resourceless. The iconography, garrulous enough on its own turf, is mute on
meaning.

A defect of Clauss's survey in particular (1990, 2000) is the casual assumption
that, because the archaeological data (i.e. excavated mithraea and their furnish-
ings, 'figured monuments', 20 epigraphy, small finds) are hard data and in them-
selves incontrovertible, their esoteric intent will to some extent be self-evident, at
least to the trained eye of the classicist. Contingently, no doubt, most of Clauss's
inferences are correct. But the method, because it is entirely ad hoc, is actually
more speculative than the speculation of the systematic interpreters whom he
faults (1990: 8; 2000: p. xx). 21

Let us allow that the Cumontian method has successfully reconstructed the
story of Mithras — which in broad terms it has; 22 also, that some of the story's
most important non-narrative implications are thereby revealed, for example the
charter implications of the mythic banquet of Mithras and Sol for the cult meal
of the initiates in the here and now. What then? Have we exhausted the
recoverable 'meaning' of the monuments and of the mysteries thereby? We
have not — and the five faults in twentieth-century hermeneutics and heuristic
procedure, which we identified in the preceding chapter (sect. 1), still remain to
be addressed.

1 9 Which is not a reason for not making them: in this field warrantable or grounded speculation
is not a vice but a necessity.

20 I shall use this literal translation of Cumont's monuments figure's (in future without quotation
marks) because English has no suitable corresponding phrase.

21 A good example of Clauss's randomness of interpretation is his treatment of the torchbearers
(2000: 95-8).

22 All of the comprehensive surveys of the Mysteries retell the basic story, though with somewhat
different 'spins': Cumont 1903: 130-40; Vermaseren 1960: 63-88 (56-8 on the bull-killing);
Turcan 2000: 95-8; Clauss 2000: 62-101 (108-13 on the banquet). Merkelbach 1984 is the
most idiosyncratic: the episodes in the story are correlated each with one of the grades (pp. 86— 1 33),
except for the bull-killing itself which is first correlated with all seven of the grades (pp. 80—2) and
then explicated at greater length as a cosmogony (pp. 193—208). On some remaining methodo-
logical problems for the explication of the Mithras myth, see the appendix to this chapter.

24 Old Ways

Of those five faults, we are already on the road to rectifying the first two. These
were (1) undervaluing the literary evidence as against the monumental, and (2)
undervaluing the mithraeum as against the figured monuments. 23

The choice of Porphyry, De antro 6 as our gateway to the mysteries redresses
the balance on both counts. It is text, and it privileges the mithraeum. It
confronts us with the fact — or the possibility, if one harbours reservations
about the reliability of the testimony — that the mithraeum, symbolizing the
universe and enabling a mystery of the descent and return of souls, was itself a
store of esoteric meaning no less than the figured monuments which it con-
tained. 24

The three more serious faults remain. These we identified as: (3) the presump-
tion — admittedly, less pervasive now than formerly — that a Mithraic 'doctrine'
or 'faith' is the ultimate object of the heuristic quest and the category into which
narrative and non-narrative iconography are to be translated; (4) the contrary —
and now more prevalent — positivist assumption that, in default of self-evident
doctrine on the figured monuments, the iconography conveys little of sign-
ificance above and beyond the story told — hence that the mysteries cannot
have been a serious and sophisticated cognitive enterprise; and (5) the disregard
of semantics and semiotics, a failure to ask not merely what the iconography
means but also how it means. This last fault is by far the gravest, for it empowers
the other two with an illusory confidence that common sense and the standard
tools of classical scholarship suffice.

In addressing these three fundamental heuristic flaws, I shall also lay the
groundwork for an alternative and, in my opinion, better approach. This new
method, as well as making greater use of the literary texts, especially Porphyry's De
antro, will return us to the iconography of the figured monuments and the design
of the mithraeum viewed as the two principal complexes of symbols in an
integrated system of symbols. In effect, we shall pull back from that second
stage in the traditional explication of the iconography, the translation of the
myth conveyed by the figured monuments into doctrine. This retreat from

23 The figured monuments, it is clear, are valued because they tell a story, while the mithraeum
does not. Consequently the former, especially the tauroctony, are seen as the conveyors of esoteric
meaning, the latter primarily as venue for the mysteries and above all for the cult meal.

24 Devaluing or ignoring De antro 6 has led to bizarre consequences. Thus Clauss, in his earlier
background chapters on 'Religious perspectives in the Roman empire' and 'Mystery religions'
(2000: chs. 2 and 3), admirably describes the very cosmology and theory of the destiny of souls
which undergirds Porphyry's testimony in De antro 6. Yet, in his chapter on the mithraeum (2000:
ch. 7), in the meticulous description of its material remains, you will find not a word about the
mithraeum's function as a highly intelligent contemporary source reports it! Although Clauss does
indeed cite De antro 6 and mention the mithraeum's cosmic symbolism, it is clear from the wording
of the original German edition (1990: 60) that he does not see the symbolism as functional: 'Der
Kultraum wird somit ein Abbild der Welt, durch die der Mensch schreitet, hin zu Gott, der im
Hintergrund sichtbar wird.' Note, too, how Michael White, in an otherwise admirable descriptive
section on the mithraeum in a book on the topic of 'building god's house in the Roman world'
(1989: 47—59 and title), is entirely silent about this aspect of the mithraeum's intent.

Old Ways 25

hypothetical doctrine back to actual symbols will eventually help us confront on
firmer ground that basic semiotic question which classical scholarship, with its
commonsensical methods, has failed to pose — let alone answer — concerning
Mithraic iconography: do symbols mearii If so, what do they mean and howl
First, however, to the chimaera of doctrine, which we shall approach via the
question oi referents: to what outside itself and the narrated myth does the rich and
complex iconography of the monuments refer? Reference and referents will be the
topic of the next chapter.

APPENDIX: SOME REMAINING METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

FOR THE EXPLICATION OF THE MITHRAS MYTH AS

REPRESENTED ON THE FIGURED MONUMENTS

1. Some of the episodes remain obscure, because details in the scenes that represent them
are difficult to discern on account of weathering and smallness of scale. For example, what
is the object which Mithras brandishes over Sol's head in the 'commissioning'
scene (Gordon 1980d: 216, scene 'S'; Hinnells and Gordon 1977—8: 213—23; Beck
1987: 310—13): a haunch or forequarter of an ox, a Phrygian cap, both of the above
(on different monuments of course), something else altogether (e.g. a military sack)?

2. The sequence of the episodes in the myth is not guaranteed by the composition or,
rather, by the disposition of the scenes on the complex monuments. There are broad
regional norms, not strictly observed, for the sequence of the subsidiary scenes around the
bull-killing, but there is certainly no canon. (On the regional sequences, from which
earlier scholars tried to deduce a history of the cult's spread — unsuccessfully, in my
view— see Saxl 1931; Will 1955; Beck 1984: 2074-8; Gordon 1980d; Turcan 2000:
53-60.) The absence of a canonical sequence of scenes suggests that the myth as an
ordered narrative was not of primary importance to the Mithraists (cf. the pre-passion
gospel narratives in early Christianity). Scholars are therefore surely justified in searching
the scenes, individually or in limited sets, for intent beyond the mere narration of a story.

3. The bizarre, unnaturalistic quality of the representation of the principal event, the
bull-killing itself (contrast, in this respect, the all too shocking realism of the crucifixion
in the Christian passion narratives). The problem with 'reading' the tauroctony as an
incident in a story is not so much the miraculous — for example the transformation of the
bull's tail into ears of wheat — as the clutter of detail: that Mithras should slay a bull — that
is, the core of the event — is credible at the level of episode in a narrative; that he should do
so in the company of a dog, a snake, a scorpion, a raven, and two clones of himself, one
with an elevated torch, the other with a lowered torch, is not. Manifestly, we have to do
with an aggregation of symbols, and we need to ask, to what end? An important
distinction between the tauroctony as 'theophany' and the framing side-scenes as bio-
graphic narrative is drawn by Zwirn (1989). To the non-narrative intent of the tauroct-
ony 's clutter of detail we shall return, more than once, in the chapters which follow.

The Problem of Referents: Interpretation with
Reference to What?

1. ICONOGRAPHY AND THE PROBLEM OF

REFERENTS

If we are to interpret the iconography, or the myth which we have reconstructed
from the iconography, we have to decide what we will interpret it with reference
to. This is not a given in the iconography in the way that it is a given in some of
the written testimonies. For example, in De antro 6 Porphyry interprets the
mithraeum as an image of the cosmos complete with 'symbols of the elements
and climes of the cosmos', and he attributes that interpretation to the Mithraists
themselves (via Eubulus). Consequently, if we think Porphyry's interpretation
worth exploring, we know exactly where to look — to cosmology. And when, later
in his essay, he talks about the signs of the zodiac, about planetary houses, about
solstices and equinoxes, we know that we must focus particularly on astronomy
and astrology in their Graeco-Roman manifestations.

The iconography, with the one major exception of the explicit astronomical
symbols, gives us no such leads. We are on our own and must choose which
way to look. Clauss's solution, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, is
to ignore the problem and to treat the referents of the iconography as
somehow self-evident. If there is incoherence or apparent contradiction, this
merely proves that Mithraism was not 'a unified religion' (2000: 16). In fact,
it does no such thing: it shows only that the researcher has begged the question
and so absolved himself from a serious search for systematic referents and
meaning.

2. REFERENTS IN THE SURROUNDING CULTURE?

Turcan's approach to the question of referents is altogether more reflective and
sophisticated. In the passage I have already quoted (1986: 221), he addresses the
problem as one of deciphering a language, and he bids us use as a reference text
the 'common ideas of the Graeco-Roman world': 'C'est un langage a dechiffrer,

The Problem of Referents 27

et Ton ne peut guere hasarder de dechiflrement qu'en se fondant sur la seman-
tique courante des motifs ou des attributs, en fonction de certaines idees com-
munes au monde greco-romain.' In other words, look to the relevant ideas in the
Mysteries' surrounding culture and in particular to the customary meanings of
the iconographic symbols we want to decipher. This is sensible advice, and it has
led in practice to substantial findings concerning many aspects of the Mysteries,
not least by Turcan himself. 1

Iconographic symbols, however, are notoriously slippery signifiers, whose
meanings' are difficult to decipher precisely because of their multivalence, the
multiplicity of their referents. How, then, do we decide to what part of antiquity's
common culture we should refer, in order to decipher what any given symbol
'means' within the mysteries? Again, Turcan has helpful answers, which we may
summarize in three principles: (1) select the most usual connotations; (2) do not
force the data into an a priori scheme; (3) consider the whole context in which
the symbol is deployed.

(1). In the article from which I have quoted, the symbol at issue is the
caduceus, the rod entwined by a pair of snakes in a figure-of-eight. In the banquet
scene on the reverse of the Fiano Romano relief (V461), one of the torchbearers
extends a caduceus towards the base of an altar, and at that exact place flames
appear to leap up from the ground. Turcan (1986: 221-6) argues that since the
caduceus is the customary attribute of Mercury, and since Mercury is the
conductor of souls (psychopompos), the caduceus will maintain this connotation
of the conduct of souls in the novel context of the Mithraic banquet scene. So the
eliciting of flames by the caduceus refers to the dispatch of human souls, 2 and the
scene expresses, among other things, Mithraic doctrine on this matter. I have no
quarrel with Turcan's conclusion. Indeed, I find it entirely plausible. Neverthe-
less, the principle on which it rests, that the symbol carries its most usual
connotation, is a working assumption, not a self-evidently true premise. It is
not inconceivable — indeed it is quite likely — that the Mithraists sometimes
employed their symbols in unusual ways and with unusual connotations.

(2). Turcan (1986: 218-21) rightly pointed out that preconceived schemes
had led his predecessors into untenable identifications of the symbols in this
exemplar of the banquet scene. Cumont (1946), in applying a doctrine of the

1 e.g. Turcan 1981 on the idea and practice of sacrifice within and beyond the Mysteries. The
best example of this approach, in my view, is Gordon 1980^ on the grades, where reference is made
to the stock of Graeco-Roman animal lore in order to understand better what it meant to be a
Mithraic Lion or Raven. This method also helps one draw distinctions between Mithraic ideas and
the ideological mainstream of pagan antiquity. As Gordon has commented (pp. 22—3), new cults,
especially in their ideologies, must walk a fine line between innovation and conservatism. They must
remain comprehensible and familiar and yet must offer something appealing in its cognitive
distinctiveness — a new and different way of understanding the world, yet recognizably still the old
ways renovated.

2 Whether into or out of the world (or both) must still be determined (Turcan 1986: 223).

28 The Problem of Referents

four elements, had identified the flames as water; Leroy Campbell (1968: 189), in
line with his blended Neoplatonic and Iranian interpretation, had identified the
altar as an urn for water. Neither identification is at all plausible. Nevertheless,
the interpreter must have some point of reference in the ideas current in the
culture, if only as a working hypothesis: one cannot interpret out into a void. In
fact, Turcan in his study of this banquet scene oriented his explication towards
Stoic ideas of the nature of the soul. Turcan's interpretation is superior to
Cumont's and to Campbell's not because he avoids a preconceived referent
among current ideas, but because the symbols fit his referent without forced
and implausible identifications.

(3). Turcan's interpretation of the Fiano Romano banquet scene carries added
persuasiveness because he integrated it with the scene of the tauroctony on the
obverse of the relief in a single explication. The blood of the sacrificed bull, he
explained, has soaked the ground at the base of the altar, and it is from the blood so
shed that souls are elicited in fiery form by the torchbearer's caduceus (1986:
224 f). The context is enlarged and the interpretation is enriched in relation to its
postulated referent, the Stoic conception of the soul. It is hard to quarrel
with this criterion of comprehensiveness. As a working principle it is indeed
admirable. One notes only that it affords no guarantee of certainty in interpret-
ation. A cluster of visual symbols has much greater elasticity than a sequence of
words. How can we tell if we have divined the correct, or even a correct, 'meaning'?

3. IRANIAN REFERENTS?

In following Turcan's principles of interpretation, I have accepted his assumption
that the culture to whose 'common ideas' we should refer is that of the 'Graeco-
Roman world'. Historically, however, Mithraic scholarship has always looked as
well to the Iranian world, and particularly to the ancient religion of that world,
Zoroastrianism or Mazdaism. Of this Turcan is, of course, well aware; he would
not deny, any more than I would, an Iranian component in, or in the background
to, these self-confessed 'Persian' Mysteries. It is a matter, finally, of emphasis: how
much weight one gives to things Graeco-Roman and how much to things
Persian; also whether one construes the 'Persian' component as genuinely Iranian
or as reinvented Perserie.

This is not the place to confront this question directly, let alone try to answer
it. 3 My present concern is merely with its implications for heuristic procedure.
Here we need only note the fact that, historically, Mithraic studies evolved
around the question. 4 Cumont himself started with the working assumption
that the mysteries of Mithras were the Roman expression of Mazdaism, and that

3 Tentative answers: Gordon 1975, 1978, 2001; Beck 1998^.

4 For a survey, see Beck 1984: 2063-71; updated in Beck 2004c: 27-9.

The Problem of Referents 29

was the conclusion which he thought the data finally warranted. Although the
last three decades of the twentieth century saw a swing towards interpreting the
mysteries much more by reference to their Graeco-Roman context, scholars
continue to put forward Iranizing interpretations, either in whole or in part. 5

It is not merely uncertainty about the culture of the referents of Mithraic
iconography that complicates our heuristic procedure. The iconography is sel-
dom so straightforward that one can assign different components of a standard
composition to unambiguous referents in one culture or the other, labelling, for
example, this item in the tauroctony 'Graeco-Roman' and that 'Iranian'. Even to
suggest such a distribution is to expose its absurdity. If both cultures are indeed
represented in the mysteries, their presence is necessarily blended in the iconog-
raphy of the monuments. We face, once again, the multivocality of the symbols:
they can 'speak' different cultures simultaneously.

In point of fact, certain components of the iconography are indeed unilingual;
or rather, they speak about referents in one culture only. These are the explicit
astronomical symbols, and what they refer to are things in the heavens as
constructed in Graeco-Roman culture, for example the zodiac and its signs. To
my knowledge, there is no equivalent feature in the iconography that refers solely
to a referent in Iranian culture or in Mazdaism. The classic case is the bull-killing
Mithras himself. Iranian Mithra is not a bull-killer: why, then, do the occidental
icons represent him as such? 6 If straightforward Iranian referents are hard to
come by for the persons represented on the monuments, how much more
difficult it is to decipher there a pure Iranian/Mazdean ideology.

It is not my intention to decry the search for Iranian/Mazdean antecedents to,
or elements in, the referents of Mithraic iconography. That search has undoubt-
edly been a fruitful one. 7 My point is only that, in the absence of referents which
are themselves manifestly and exclusively Iranian or Mazdean, the conclusions
can only be more or less credible, more or less plausible, but never certain. 8

The question of Iranian or Mazdean antecedents poses the further issue of
historical depth. Even those who favour a scenario of radical reinvention of the

5 For a select bibliography, see Gordon in Clauss 2000: 185 f. The acme of Iranizing interpret-
ations, both in scope and complexity, was undoubtedly Campbell 1968. See also Widengren 1966,
1980. The modern surveys, though they also do justice to eastern Mit(h)ra, on the whole treat the
Western mysteries as an autonomous creation: Turcan 2000, Merkelbach 1984, Clauss 1990/2000.
The last of these marks the most radical break with an Iranian past. Nevertheless, strong voices still
rightly insist on substantial continuities from East to West: Boyce and Grenet 1991: 468-90;
Kreyenbroek 1994; Russell 1994; most recently, Bivar 1999; Weiss 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000.

6 The other intensely problematic figure is the Mithraic lion-headed god. An indication of the
frailty of the Iranizing case is that its proponents offer two mutually exclusive identities, Zurvan and
Ahriman; for a summary, Beck 1984: 2087-8.

7 To choose one example out of many, see Hinnells 1975 on Iranian ideas of sacrifice in the
Mithraic bull-killing.

8 Strangely, Iranizing interpretations are often regarded as more secure than 'speculative' astro-
nomical interpretations (e.g. Swerdlow 1991). With the latter we can at least be sure that we are
always in the right cultural ballpark.

30 The Problem of Referents

mysteries in the West do not propose that the tauroctony, the side-scenes, and the
entire ideology to which they give expression were drafted in a single compre-
hensive exercise. Antecedents are of course of even greater concern to those who
favour continuity from Mazdaism and Iran. The Cumontian story, for example,
is quite complex. Here is his well-known summary, expressed in an elaborate
geological metaphor of stratification (1903: 30-1):

The basal layer of this religion, its lower and primordial stratum, is the faith of ancient
Iran, from which it took its origin. Above this Mazdean substratum was deposited in
Babylon a thick sediment of Semitic doctrines, and afterwards the local beliefs of Asia
Minor added to it their alluvial deposits. Finally, a luxuriant vegetation of Hellenic ideas
burst forth from this fertile soil and partly concealed from view its true original nature.

Again, the veracity of this and other such scenarios is not at issue here.
Displaying it does, however, raise again the important distinction, introduced
above (Ch. 1, sect. 6), between the two types of account that one can give of the
iconography of the monuments: the synchronic, which provides an explanation
in terms of structure and meaning; and the diachronic, which explains in terms of
antecedents. It is essential to be transparent about which type of account one is
offering at every stage.

4. CELESTIAL (ASTRONOMICAL/ASTROLOGICAL)
REFERENTS?

I have alluded already to another class of referents invoked by Mithraic scholar-
ship, especially in the final quarter of the last century: the astronomical and/or
astrological. The warrant for looking in that direction is obvious and incontro-
vertible: Mithraic iconography is awash with explicit astronomical symbols,
notably zodiacs; 9 the Sun god and the Moon goddess are present in the principal
cult icon, the tauroctony; the Sun god is a major player in the episodes of the
Mithras myth; and Mithras is himself the (Unconquered) Sun. 10 In cult life,
moreover, each of the seven grades was under the protection of, and exemplified,
one of the seven planets. Lastly, as Cumont himself observed (1899: 198), most
of our very few ancient literary explications of the monuments point in the same
direction, to the visible heavens as constructed in Graeco-Roman astronomy and
astrology. We have already taken a first look at the principal such testimony,
Porphyry's De antro 6, on the mithraeum as 'image of the universe' equipped
with 'symbols of the elements and climes of the universe'.

9 In H. G. Gundel's catalogue of ancient zodiacs (1992), eleven of twenty-eight atcifotm zodiacs
(type 1.5) are Mithraic, as are seven of thirty-six ring zodiacs in stone (type 1. 4a). Mithraea, as well as
'figured monuments', are embellished with astronomical symbols, e.g. the 'Seven Spheres'
mithraeum in Ostia, which I shall discuss in a later chapter.

10 I bypass, for the moment, the paradox of one solar person and two solar gods.

The Problem of Referents 3 1

Now, whatever else the explicit astronomical symbols intimate, their primary
referents are unambiguous. A zodiac cut in stone refers to the zodiac in the
heavens: a notional band of twelve 'signs' modelled on twelve constellations
through which — more precisely, along the central line of which, that is, the
ecliptic — the Sun appears to pass in the course of his annual journey around the
earth.

Not only is there a wealth of explicit astronomical symbolism on the monu-
ments, but there is also good reason to suppose that in the tauroctony, in
particular, reference is made to the visible heavens by deploying astronomical
symbols in a less obvious, less conventional form as elements in what appears
superficially to be an episode in a story 11 Mithras slays a bull, and around these
two are grouped a dog, a snake, a scorpion, a raven, a pair of twins, and not
infrequently (particularly in Germany and to a lesser extent on the Danube) a
cup and a lion too; the bull's tail is metamorphosed into an ear (or ears) of wheat.
In the heavens (see star-chart, Fig. 1) we find, within a band extending along and
below the zodiac from Taurus to Scorpius, constellations imagined in ancient
uranography as a bull (Taurus), two dogs (Canis Major and Minor), a snake
(Hydra), 12 a scorpion (Scorpius), a raven (Corvus), a pair of twins (Gemini), a
cup (Crater), a lion (Leo), and finally a star called the 'wheat ear' (Spica = Alpha
Virginis) . ' 3

It is improbable in the extreme that this set of correspondences between
elements of the tauroctony and constellations in the heavens is an accidental,
unintended coincidence. 14 That said, it must be admitted that most Mithraic
scholars have in fact either ignored the correspondences altogether or treated
them as too trivial and marginal to the tauroctony 's meaning to warrant serious
consideration. 15 In Clauss's survey (1990/2000), you will find not a word about
them, just as you will find not a word about the specifics of the astronomical
symbolism that makes the mithraeum an 'image of the universe'. Yet, paradox-
ically, his introductory chapter (ch. 2) on the background of religious thought
('Religious perspectives in the Roman Empire') concentrates precisely on the
ancient view of the heavens and the stars as the goal of the soul's escape from the
confines of terrestrial mortality. This strange state of affairs in Mithraic scholar-
ship requires some explanation.

That scholars shy away from the mysteries' astronomical/astrological symbol-
ism is explicable partly in terms of modern attitudes and reactions to the subject

11 On the strangeness of the scene as nartative episode, see above, Ch. 2, app., sect. 3.

12 One of three serpentine constellations; the other two, Serpens and Draco, are in different parts
of the celestial sphere from the zone defined above.

13 The first scholar to draw attention to the correspondences between elements of the tauroctony
and constellations was K. B. Stark (1869).

14 In a new essay in Beck 2004c (251—65) I demonstrate that the probability of unintended
coincidence is statistically negligible.

15 Turcan (2000: 106) does allow them 'secondary importance.

EAST

SCORPIUS

Equator VIRGO

LIBRA ^""~"\Autumn Equinox j

Castor

LEO

• '

CANCER

Pollux

.GEMINI

WEST

Pleiades .

«l

Antares

■£V Spica

Regulus

Summer

Solstice [I

CANIS MINOR

• Procyon

TAURUS \ Hyades
Aldebaran*— *

CANIS MAJOR
• Sirius

Fig. 1. The ecliptic and zodiac from Taurus to Scorpius, with southern paranatellonta of the summer quadrant, epoch of 100 ce

The Problem of Referents 33

matter. First, we are not as routinely and experientially familiar with the visible
heavens and the motions of the celestial bodies as were the ancients. Conse-
quently, we do not recognize the referents of the symbols and their interrelations
as readily as did they. We are diffident because we do not effortlessly comprehend
what it is that the astronomical/astrological signifiers in this or that context might
be signalling. Put bluntly, we don't understand 'how it all works', either in the
apparent world or in the syntax and semantics of the astronomical/astrological
sign systems.

Secondly, astronomy and astrology have long since parted company. The
former is a respected science, the latter a derided superstition, all the more
suspect because not yet eradicated. By and large, the best historians of ancient
astronomy focus on the scientific — in the strictly modern sense — accomplish-
ments of their predecessors in antiquity. They pan for astronomical gold in a
stream of astrological grit and gravel. With some exceptions, they are uninter-
ested in, and dismissive of, the predictive and theological goals which motivated
ancient astronomy on the Babylonian side and the equally theological but also
philosophical motivation of the Greeks. 16 The very people, then, who do
understand 'how it all works', both in the world of appearances and in astro-
nomical/astrological sign systems, are those least disposed to find sophisticated
and systematic reference to the heavens in the religious context of Mithraic
iconography 17 Mithraism has next to nothing of strictly astronomical interest
to teach a positivist historian of astronomy. 18 By contrast, it has a great deal to
teach those concerned with the religious deployment of astronomy in antiquity's
cultural constructs.

There are two further reasons, specific to the study of Mithraism as it has
developed historically, why the astronomical/astrological referents in both the

16 For the narrow aim of reconstructing the 'mathematical' astronomy of the ancients, the
exclusion of all astrological (in the modern sense), theological, and philosophical (again, in the
modern sense) considerations is unquestionably necessary. We would do well to remember, however,
that the scientific astronomy thus reconstructed is our construct not the ancients'. It is salutary to
recall the preface to Ptolemy's Almagest, in which the greatest of the ancient astronomers locates his
subject midway between theology and physics, as a philosophical discipline concerned with
immortal and unchanging, yet visible, entities, the contemplation of which is both an aesthetic
and an ethical activity. This of course is the same Ptolemy who wrote the Tetrabiblos, a treatise on
astrology (in our sense).

17 I indicate a bias rather than an incapacity. Of course historians of ancient astronomy can and
do produce excellent studies of the social and religious contexts in which astronomy and astrology
flourished (e.g. Jones 1994, on 'the place of astronomy in Roman Egypt').

18 Hence, I suspect, the animus of N. M. Swerdlow's (1991) attack on the astronomical
interpretations of the mysteries. Swerdlow is a distinguished historian of astronomy, and his
particular target, David Ulansey (1989), had the temerity to propose that the tauroctony encoded
one of ancient astronomy's most important and highly technical discoveries, the 'precession of the
equinoxes'. On the limited question of precession I agree with Swerdlow against Ulansey. Never-
theless, it is revealing that in rescuing high science from the domain of religion Swerdlow could not
resist belittling the Mysteries of Mithras, although he explicitly acknowledged (1991: 58) — and
amply demonstrated — his lack of scholarly competence in the study of religion.

34 The Problem of Referents

iconography and the texts of the mysteries have been minimized. First, in the
Cumontian story of the evolution of Mithraism the astronomical/astrological
components are late and superficial, 'les propos d'antichambre dont on entrete-
nait les proselytes de la porte avant de les admettre a la connaissance de la
doctrine esoterique et de leur reveler les traditions iraniennes sur l'origine et la
fin de 1'homme et du monde' (1899: 202). Cumont never demonstrated that this
was so: it was merely asserted as part of his scenario of the reception and
realization of essentially Iranian mysteries in the West. Nevertheless, it was
accepted as historically true by those following in Cumont's footsteps. Cumont's
status as a historian also of ancient astrology gave it additional weight. 19 If an
authority in both fields said it was so, why should one suppose differently?

The second reason for trivializing astronomical/astrological reference in the
mysteries has to do with the quality and thrust of the celestial interpretations
themselves. These, for the most part, have concentrated on decoding the con-
stellation symbolism of the tauroctony, while overlooking the more explicit
symbolism of the mithraeum as 'cosmic image'. An astronomical interpretation
of the mithraeum has a greater and more immediate plausibility than an
astronomical interpretation of the tauroctony, not only because the key symbols
are 'in clear' (for example, the signs of the zodiac on the benches of the Sette Sfere
mithraeum), but also because, as we saw in Chapter 4 (sect. 1), an intelligent and
well-informed contemporary source tells us — and tells us how and why — the
mithraeum was constructed on a principle of correspondence with the celestial
macrocosm. For that reason, I have chosen to make Porphyry, De antro nym-
pharum 6 and the ideal mithraeum the gateway for our explorations of the
mysteries. Other astronomical interpretations, I sense, have made weaker cases
by plunging more or less precipitately into a decoding of the tauroctony.
Consequently, they have lacked persuasiveness. Like Adonis gardens, they flour-
ish briefly and wither, because they are ungrounded in proper contextual soil.

The astronomical interpretations are also suspect because they pose, or seem to
pose, a stark either/or choice: either the tauroctony has an exclusively astral
meaning or it has no astral meaning at all (or only a marginal one). The choice,
however, is illusory, and in fact the astronomical interpreters do not pose it; at
worst, their interpretations are mute as to non-astrological significance. In
fighting shy of the astronomical interpretations, scholars may well be confusing
medium and message. As we shall explore later, the constellation correspond-
ences do not imply, in and of themselves, that the tauroctony conveys an astral
meaning. The position I shall eventually take, simply put, is that the celestial
symbols convey a cluster of messages which are primarily about Mithras, not
about the heavens. More precisely, the symbols mirror their counterparts in the

19 See Cumont's popular Astrology and Religion among the Greeks and Romans (1912) and his
L'Egypte des astrologues (1937). Cumont was also one of the most active founders, promoters, and
editors of the important multi-volume Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum (1898—1953).

The Problem of Referents 35

heavens, the actual constellations, and it is these latter which convey messages
about Mithras. 'The heavens declare . . . ', and what they declare is not self-
referential, or at least not primarily so.

For the most part, the astronomical interpretations have concentrated on
narrow questions of identity, in particular the celestial identity of Mithras. 20 If
the elements of the tauroctony correspond to the various constellations listed
above, then what constellation is indicated by Mithras in the centre of the
composition? The plausibility of the approach is greatly undercut by the multi-
plicity of the answers returned and the fact that they appear to be mutually
exclusive. 21 Michael Speidel (1980) proposed Orion, David Ulansey (1989)
Perseus, K.-G. Sandelin (1988) Auriga. It does not help that none of these
three constellations is at the centre of the constellation group signified by the
other elements in the composition of the tauroctony (see star-chart, Fig. I). 22

Reactions to these and other celestial identifications are polarized. Some find
them totally persuasive, others totally unconvincing. Their attractiveness lies in
their power to inject a meaning into the tauroctony which is precise, objective (if
you buy into the logic of the argument), and precisely describable. They explain
by deciphering, by translating one set of signs into another. They thus give a
sense of accomplishment and discovery. The new sign set, moreover, is more
readily comprehensible, more straightforwardly articulated, and thus much more
congenial to the reductionist mentality than the strange, loosely co-ordinated,
unconfined symbolism of the violent and threateningly numinous scene on the
tauroctony 's surface.

Negative reaction takes one of two forms. Positivists sceptical of the logic of
the argument consider the theory a misappropriation of scientific astronomy and
the reduction spurious. 23 Those more profoundly and sympathetically commit-
ted to interpreting the mysteries instinctively object to the reduction precisely
because it both demystifies the mystery and trivializes the tauroctony. In other
words, the astronomical translation of the strange, unconfined symbolism of the
numinous scene is taken pejoratively. Is the tauroctony really no more than a star-
chart posing a riddle of identity? What larger purpose could possibly be served by
making the tauroctonous Mithras this or that constellation? Scepticism along
these lines is certainly salutary, and I sympathize — though I do not agree — with

20 I critique this approach in more detail in a new essay ('The rise and fall of the astral
identifications of the tauroctonous Mithras') in Beck 2004<:: 235-49.

21 Actually, given the multivalence of symbols — the usual law of non-contradiction does not
apply, in that one symbol can simultaneously signify several referents — a case could be made for
identifying the tauroctonous Mithras with as many constellations as seem apposite. In fact, however,
none of the scholars mentioned makes such a case.

22 Orion is in the lower right corner (south-west), Perseus and Auriga in the upper right (north-
west). (NB: In a star-chart the directions of east and west are inverted from those in a terrestrial
map.)

23 Swerdlow 1991 (review article of Ulansey 1989) is the best example.

36 The Problem of Referents

Turcan's counter-arguments (2000: 105-8), based as they are on an admission of
the secondary significance of the constellation correspondences. 24

Before passing on from the astronomical/astrological referents postulated for
the tauroctony, we should briefly survey the remaining claimants.

First, the constellation of Perseus is not the only celestial identity proposed by
David Ulansey (1989) for the tauroctonous Mithras. Ulansey postulates a more
profound identity for Mithras as the power responsible for an arcane but
fundamental cosmic phenomenon, discovered in antiquity (by Hipparchus in
the second century bce), known as the 'precession of the equinoxes'. Precession,
we now know, is caused by a wobble in the earths axis of rotation. It manifests
itself in an apparent, very slow shift of the position of the celestial poles and of the
equinoxes (the points at which the ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect).
According to Ulansey, the Mithraists believed that their god had effected this shift
of the world axis. The tauroctony is thus an allegorized display of the power of
Mithras in accomplishing this cosmic feat. This is not the point at which to
engage with Ulansey's theory. 25 In due course I shall demonstrate that there are
more plausible ways to account for those features of the tauroctony on which
Ulansey bases his case for Mithras as the agent of precession. Currently, Ulansey's
theory is the best-known — or most notorious, depending on one's point of
view — of the late twentieth-century celestial identifications. It is certainly the
most sensational, since it claims that astronomical knowledge previously thought
to be the preserve of a few highly sophisticated astronomers was not only known
to the Mithraists but also appropriated by them into the arcana of their mysteries.

Secondly, there are two interpretations which involve reference to the constel-
lation of Leo (see star-chart, Fig. 1) but do not assert the outright equation of the
tauroctonous Mithras with that constellation. The first of these is Alessandro
Bausani's theory (1979) that the ultimate archetype of the tauroctony is the Near
Eastern motif of the bull-killing lion, which in turn can be interpreted (following
Hartner 1 965) as a very old expression of the seasonal cycle in which the lion of
summer (Leo) overcomes the bull of spring (Taurus). Constellation lore thus lies
in the prehistory' of the tauroctony's composition. The second interpretation
centrally involving Leo was advanced by me (Beck 1994£), starting with the

24 One is less sympathetic to Clauss's total disregard of the evidence, on the unargued assertion
that astronomical interpretations are 'unconvincing speculation' (2000: p. xx). See also his review of
the German translation of Ulansey's book (Clauss 2001).

25 For critiques see Swerdlow 1991, Beck 1994£: 36—40. Clauss's review (see preceding note) is as
polemical and contemptuous as Swerdlow's, but it attacks not Ulansey's use of ancient astronomy
per se, but rather his historical methods in constructing a narrative link connecting Hipparchus to
the Mithraists. Here Clauss's criticisms, like Swerdlow's, hit the mark. Where both critics are wrong
and Ulansey is right is in the evidence for astronomy's massive and sophisticated presence in the
symbolism of Mithraic monuments. This requires a causal explanation; if not Ulansey's, then some
other. But the necessity of an explanation is something neither Swerdlow nor Clauss will concede
even in principle, the former because the very idea of learned astral symbolism affronts his standards
for serious astronomy in the ancient world, the latter because it requires understanding of a kind not
in the repertoire of the exemplary ancient historian.

The Problem of Referents 37

postulate — the very obvious can sometimes be overlooked — that the taurocto-
nous Mithras is precisely what the monuments call him, the Unconquered Sun.
Leo lies in the middle of the band of constellations intimated by most of the
other elements in the tauroctony. Therefore the tauroctonous Mithras is the Sun
in Leo. The proper question to ask of the tauroctony is not 'who is Mithras?' but
'where is Mithras?' or, since the position of the Sun in the signs/constellations of
the zodiac indicates seasonal time, 'when is Mithras?' — or in other words, at what
time of year does he do what he does?

I drew on an interpretation of the tauroctony by A. J. Rutgers (1970), equating
Mithras with the Sun and the bull with the Moon. (There is as good warrant for
the latter identification as for the former, as we shall see later.) Now, the most
dramatic astronomical phenomenon observable as the Sun and the Moon pursue
each other around the heavens is the eclipse, when the light of one or other of
these bodies is quite suddenly and unexpectedly dimmed. In these terms, then,
the victory of Mithras (Sun) over the bull (Moon) can be interpreted as a lunar
eclipse. Less dramatic, but equally explicable as the victory of the Sun over the
Moon, is the monthly disappearance of the old crescent Moon into the Sun's
brilliance, followed by her reappearance a couple of days later as the 'New Moon'.
Lastly there are those rare occasions when the conjunction of Sun and Moon is so
close that the latter actually passes in front of the former, causing a solar eclipse.
Any account of the mysteries which takes the solar persona of Mithras seriously
must accommodate this setback in the career of the 'Unconquered Sun'.

To return to the bull as Taurus, the most recent interpretation, that of Bruno
Jacobs (1999), relates the bull-killing to the heliacal setting (i.e. last evening
visibility) of Taurus the constellation at the time of the spring equinox. The
tauroctony thus represents the overcoming of winter and proclaims Sol Mithras
the paragon of seasonal renewal, youth, and invincibility.

Thirdly, there is a recent interpretation which, in a seeming paradox, un-
couples Mithras from the Sun and identifies him with the vault of heaven itself,
particularly the night sky, in which the doings of the celestial gods are made
manifest. In this interpretation, by Maria Weiss (1994, 1996, 1998, 2000), the
classic formula deus sol invictus mithras is explained paratactically: the
Sun god (and) Unconquered Mithras.

Fourth are astronomical interpretations which refer the tauroctony primarily
to time. Time and calendrics have always been the concern of astronomy and
much of its raison d'etre, since the apparent motions of the celestial bodies are the
very measures of time. Time, moreover, especially seasonal time, is deeply
implicated with the sacred. It is no mere matter of measured duration. Thus, it
is plausible to descry in the tauroctony references to time as well as to bodies in
celestial space, temporal relationships as well as spatial relationships. Of the two
interpretations which look to time, that of Stanley Insler (1978) is to be
commended for adducing the important fact that the positioning of the elements
of the tauroctony, right to left, matches approximately the sequence of the

38 The Problem of Referents

corresponding constellations from west to east, and hence the sequence in which
they rise and set heliacally during the course of the year. 26 Right = west = earlier;
left = east = later. I shall have more to say later about this pair of fundamental
structural equations.

The second temporal interpretation is that of the historian of science John D.
North (1990). As one might expect, North's interpretation is technically the most
accomplished in astronomical terms. He interprets the tauroctony more as a
clock than a calendar, correlating thirteen features in the tauroctony with
constellations or parts of constellations which set successively at intervals of
one hour, more or less. 27 One wonders, however, why observing the passing of
the hours should have been of such fundamental importance to the Mithraists
that they encoded it in their principal icon. The striking of the hours on the
parish clock is not at the heart of the Christian mystery: why should we suppose it
so in the Mithraic mystery? Although he introduces much detailed star lore,
North does not tell us. Strangely, North also misses the one piece of archaeo-
logical evidence which securely relates ancient time-telling to ancient star maps,
albeit in a secular context (as far as anything in antiquity can be called truly
secular). This is the device of the anaphoric clock, whose 'dial' or clock-face was a
star map rotating once every twenty-four hours (Vitruvius 9.8; Drachmann
1954).

Fifthly and finally, there is the interpretation of Reinhold Merkelbach (1984:
81). The reference to the heavens which Merkelbach sees in the tauroctony is
indirect and follows from his identification of various elements of the tauroctony
with each of the seven grades. Since the grades are correlated with the planets,
each element in the basic tauroctony, the bull excepted, alludes secondarily to a
planet. Thus, the four subsidiary animals in the tauroctony (raven, snake,
scorpion, dog) correspond to the first four grades (Raven, Nymphus, Miles,
Leo), and hence intimate, respectively, the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, and
Jupiter. Merkelbach's planetary correspondences follow a priori from the primary
correlations. Hence they stand or fall with the latter, since the direct links
between animals and planets are not overwhelmingly compelling. 28

The more ways in which the tauroctony and its features are referred to the
heavens, the less convincing the entire enterprise becomes. One can only plead
the multivalence of symbols so far; after a point, which has probably now been
reached for all but enthusiasts, the law of diminishing returns sets in. One
sympathizes with those who turn away, in weariness or scepticism, to simpler

26 Insler proposed that the heliacal setting of Taurus in April was the time of year signalled by the
tauroctony.

27 'Set' is used here in the everyday sense in which we speak, e.g., of a sunset, as opposed to the
once-a-year 'heliacal' setting of a star.

28 With the exception, perhaps, of the equation taven — Mercury. The problem is that while
individually each trail from animal to planet is viable, all the correspondences are effected by
different routes, so that the set of correspondences as a whole is ultimately unconvincing.

The Problem of Referents 39

interpretations — or to no interpretation at all, just a reading of the tauroctony at
face value without translation. Yet the basic constellation correspondences of the
tauroctony cannot be denied, nor can the basic correspondence of the mithraeum
to the universe via its 'cosmic symbolism'.

If we are to reach a more convincing interpretation via astronomy and
astrology, we should listen again to some words of Robert Turcan quoted already
in this and the preceding chapters: 'C'est un langage a dechiffrer.' If the iconog-
raphy is a language and if many of its signs are astral, one cannot assume that its
messages too are necessarily astral. Some of them no doubt are; perhaps many of
them are. I propose, however, in future chapters to focus on astral symbolism
more as medium than as message, less on questions of 'what' — what, celestially,
do the elements of the tauroctony refer to? — and more on questions of 'how' and
'why' — how and why does the tauroctony refer to the heavens, how and why does
the mithraeum function as an 'image of the universe'? 'Star-talk', in my model, is
the idiom of the Mithraic mysteries, not its substance.

5. CONCLUSION

Scholarly interpretation of the Mithraic mysteries, which started so promisingly
with Cumont's great two-volume work at the turn of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, appears to have reached something of a dead end at the
turn of the twentieth and twenty-first. All avenues of reference — whether to the
Graeco-Roman cultural milieu, or to Iranian religion, or to ancient astronomy
and astrology — have been explored, and the intuitively obvious inferences have
been drawn. The veins appear to be exhausted, the mines worked out. In any
case, omnibus interpretations are now out of fashion, and likewise grand causal
explanations which privilege Iranian antecedents or astronomical constructs.
Indeed, there is a tendency now to disperse and pluralize the mysteries into
regional variations over limited time spans. 29 The local and the particular
predominate, and perhaps that is as it should be — it is certainly safer. Grand
narratives are perhaps just grand illusions.

It might therefore seem that in deconstructing 'doctrine', as I intend to do in
the next chapter, one is demolishing a straw man — no very arduous feat. There is,
nevertheless, good reason to proceed, not because there is still a widespread belief
in a fixed Mithraic doctrine now lost but in principle recoverable, but because
demolition to date has been, paradoxically, both less radical and more radical
than it should be. It has been insufficiently radical, in that while scholars now
seldom postulate a lost corpus of Mithraic doctrine, the Cumontian assumption

29 Turcan 1999 is a good example. Turcan there suggests that the correlation of grades to planets
attested at the Felicissimus mithraeum in Ostia (V299) and the Sta Prisca mithraeum in Rome
(V476) was a local third-century phenomenon.

40 The Problem of Referents

that Mithraism was first and foremost a 'faith' with 'beliefs', and hence with
'doctrine' in a more diffuse sense, still flourishes. Not that 'doctrine' as a category
has to be entirely extirpated: no one doubts that teaching and exegesis took place
in the mithraeum; and what is taught and explicated can properly be called
'doctrine'. Rather, what needs to be modified is the presupposition that the
inculcation of belief was the primary function of the mysteries. When made
explicit, that assumption loses much of its credibility; but left implicit, as it
usually is, it is dangerous. As I shall show in the next chapter, it has seriously
compromised the understanding of at least one important piece of evidence, our
'gateway' text of Porphyry on the mithraeum (De antra 6).

Much more serious are the ill effects of an out-and-out dismissal of doctrine.
For the vacuum which it leaves seems to legitimate a prejudice, both elitist and
naive, to which classicists are still all too liable: the assumption that doctrine is an
index of a thoughtful religion. Absence of doctrine, so runs this logic, is thus
precisely what one would expect in a plain man's religion such as Mithraism.
Why look for doctrine where one's model of reason predicts that it cannot be
found? And why look for anything in doctrine's place? To the new positivism
these are simply non-issues.

In the next chapter I shall demonstrate how deeply rooted is this attitude.
Indeed, it is one of our less fortunate legacies from antiquity itself. Exposing it,
and the naive theory of mind on which it depends, will be part of our continuing
task.

Doctrine Redefined

1. BACK TO PORPHYRY, DE ANTRO 6

For our discussion of 'doctrine' we return to our gateway text, Porphyry's De
antro 6, on the form and function of the mithraeum:

Porphyry, as we have already noted (Ch. 2, sect. 1), tells us here two things of
great importance: (1) that the mithraeum was intended to be, and was designed
and furnished as, 'a model of the universe', a microcosm in the literal sense of
a self-contained miniature replica of the cosmos; and (2) that in this setting
the initiates of Mithras were inducted into a mystery of the soul's descent and
return.

We also observed (3) that Porphyry appears to be talking about ritual,
specifically a ritual of initiation, rather than instruction; and (4) that whatever
is effected for the initiates in the mithraeum works by symbolism.

2. 'INDUCTION INTO A MYSTERY': THE DOCTRINAL
MISCONSTRUCTION OF DE ANTRO 6

Now it might seem over-cautious to say that Porphyry in De antro 6 'appears' to
be talking about ritual rather than instruction. Surely ritual is what Porphyry is
talking about, and 'appearances' can be dispensed with. That, however, is
precisely the point at issue. Scholars have mostly assumed — mostly, too, without
argument — that what is transmitted to the initiate at his initiation is teaching
about the descent and ascent of souls. One can see this in the translations of the
first sentence. Here is the Greek:

42 Doctrine Redefined

houto kai Persai ten eis kato kathodon ton psychon kai palin exodon mystagogountes telousi
ton mysten, eponomasantes spelaion ton topon.

The Arethusa edition, as we have seen, translates (my italics):

Similarly, the Persians call the place a cave where they introduce an initiate to the
mysteries, revealing to him the path by which souls descend and go back again.

The more recent English translation (Lamberton 1983, my italics) runs:

Likewise the Persian mystagogues initiate their candidate by explaining to him the
downward journey of souls and their subsequent return, and they call the place where
this occurs a 'cave'.

The keyword is the participle mystagogountes, which means literally 'inducting
into a mystery'. Grammatically, the kathodos ('road down') and exodos ('road
out') of souls are the participle's direct objects: they are what the Mithraists both
make a mystery o/*and induct the initiate into. In so doing they make him
'perfect' in the mystery {telousi). Accordingly, I would render the sentence thus:

Thus too the Persians perfect their initiate by inducting him into a mystery of the descent
of souls and their exit back out again, calling the place a 'cave'.

Neither the Arethusa rendering nor Lamberton's is a wjistranslation; but both
are tendentious in that they explain the mystagogy by suggesting modes of
delivery unwarranted by the text. In place of the literal 'induction' ('leading',
-agoge) into the mystery, we are offered (1) a revelation and (2) instruction. Of the
two, 'revealing' adds less to the literal sense, for in certain mysteries, notably the
Eleusinian, we know that 'showing' (hierophany) and 'viewing' (epopteia) were of
the essence. With 'explaining', however, we — and the initiates — are sent down a
different route altogether: 'explaining' implies instruction; the initiate, in a word,
is taught about the descent and exit of souls. 1 Thus the mystery is transformed
into a doctrine, and the mithraeum into a classroom and/or a visual aid to
learning about one's entry into and exit from this mortal world.

3. TEACHING VERSUS ENACTING THE 'DESCENT
AND DEPARTURE OF SOULS': THE COMMONSENSICAL

ANSWER

In a subsequent chapter we shall pursue the literal intent of De antro 6. Here,
however, the role of doctrine in the Mithraic mysteries is the issue, and the
question we need to ask next is why the plain sense of De antro 6 has been so
misunderstood.

1 Simonini's translation (1986: 45) commendably avoids the error: ' . . . i Persiani danno il nome
di antro al luogo in qui durante i riti introducono l'iniziato al mistero della discesa delle anime sulla
terra e della loro risalita da qui.'

Doctrine Redefined 43

Common sense is the first culprit. If I am inducted into a mystery of the
'descent and departure of souls', surely it must be something I am taught, not
something I enact, because my soul has already descended at or prior to my birth
and will not depart until my death. What can possibly be done in a mithraeum to
re-enact and pre-enact these processes? So it follows, doesn't it, that what
I undergo in a mithraeum must be instruction about the two processes, the
transmission of esoteric information about what happened to me before my birth
and what will happen to me after my death? Nicodemus' point is well taken
(John 3: 4): 'Can [a man] enter his mother's womb a second time and be born?'

In an earlier study (Beck 1988: 77-9) I have combated the casual assumption
that the 'journey back out again' can only refer to the posthumous ascent of the
soul and therefore that initiation into the mystery must necessarily have taken
the form of instruction. Nicodemus received one answer concerning rebirth; the
Mithraists would give another concerning both a second birth and an anticipa-
tion of death: yes, in our ritual you can indeed experience what you were before
you were born and what you will be after you die. Or rather, in the 'time out of
time' of the mithraeum-universe you can experience your arrival, sojourn, and
departure from earth as stages in an ampler continuum of being. 2

Ritual, then, predominates; but we need not doubt that the 'descent and
departure of souls' was also explained verbally to the initiates. In this weak
sense of ad hoc teaching, it is likely that there was indeed a 'doctrine' of the
descent and departure of souls in the Mithraic mysteries. That, however, is an
independent probability; it is not an entailment of Porphyry's text, and there is
certainly no warrant here for discerning 'doctrine' in the strong sense of fixed,
uniform, written teaching. (In fairness to contemporary scholarship, I should add
that an extreme doctrinal view, postulating a definite corpus of written text no
longer extant, is a theoretical limiting case, not one, as far as I know, which is
seriously entertained today.)

4. AN EXPECTATION OF APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR

That the Mithraists were taught about their posthumous destiny in and as a rite
of initiation is not just the commonsensical interpretation of De antro 6; it is also
the most conformable to our expectations of how people behave. It is easy for us
to imagine the initiates receiving instruction about the celestial journey their
souls would undertake after death (and the reverse journey down from the
heavens which they had already undertaken prior to birth); easy, too, to imagine
the Father or other senior member giving that instruction from his stock of
authoritative learning and using his mithraeum, with its store of cosmic symbol-
ism 'appropriately arranged', as teaching aid.

2 On 'time out of time' in ritual, see Rappaport 1999: 216-25.

44 Doctrine Redefined

Far less easy is it to imagine our 'average' Mithraist — the veteran in Dacia, say,
or the petty official of the customs bureaucracy at Poetovio, or the successful
Ostian freedman — actually undergoing in the here and now an experience of
celestial soul travel, an intimation of what he was before he was and of what he
would be after he was. Intuitively we confine such experiences to the shaman, to
the solitary adept of arcana such as the Graeco-Egyptian magician and other-
worldly voyager who put together the so-called 'Mithras Liturgy'. 3

My point at this stage is not that the Mithraists actually did have experiences of
celestial soul travel but that scholars instinctively and automatically discount the
possibility. Evidence about a ritual performed is accordingly transformed into
evidence of instruction given, hence of a doctrine about the soul's posthumous
(and prenatal) destiny. This transformation is effected below the threshold of the
scholar's conscious consideration of the interpretive options available. We simply
cannot envisage the Dacian veteran, the petty bureaucrat at Poetovio, the Ostian
freedman experiencing celestial soul travel, albeit in ritual. Ergo he must be
learning about it — for future reference.

It is our imaginations, not the imaginations of the Mithraists, which are
deficient. Scholarship has unthinkingly assumed, against the plain intent of
Porphyry's testimony, that the Mithraists, being the people they were, were
incapable of the sort of experience attributed to them. What explains this
attitude, apart from commonsensical but misleading expectations about the
behaviour of 'ordinary' people? It is a long and not very creditable story, and it
has its origin in the attitudes of our scholarly predecessors back in antiquity. Let
us start with the ancients, moving at the same time from the particular testimony
of De antro 6 to the more general question of 'doctrine' in the Mithraic mysteries
and in the wider religious world beyond.

5. 'REASON FOR THE WISE, SYMBOLS FOR THE VULGAR'

Information about the Mithraic mysteries has been passed on to us by the
Neoplatonists, primarily by Porphyry in his De antro, not because they were
interested in Mithraism per se — let alone in the rank-and-file membership — but
as grist to the mill of their own philosophical and theological speculations. On
this all modern scholars agree. Opinion diverges, however, on the next question:
did the ancients report their data from the Mithraic mysteries accurately*. Here we
must immediately concede two points: first that modern research standards of
objectivity and accuracy would be irrelevant to Porphyry and his colleagues;
secondly that they would regard massaging the data (as we would see it) not

3 I cite the Mithras Liturgy (text and translation Betz 2003) not because of its (tenuous)
connection to the actual Mysteries of Mithras but because it is the best example of the magical
ascent.

Doctrine Redefined 45

only as justifiable but also, if the data did not already fit, as methodologically
necessary in order to access a higher truth on the philosophical/theological plane.
There is, then, no presumption of accurate reportage such as one would expect of
a modern ethnographer or a sociologist describing a sub-culture.

Elsewhere I have argued that the testimony of Porphyry and his sources in De
antro is substantially accurate. 4 They did not misrepresent the data because they
did not need to; the Mithraic evidence already said what they needed it to say.
However, the contrary opinion is also widely held: that while there is a core of
accurate information (e.g. mithraea really were called 'caves', some of them were
actually sited in natural caves, and many others were made to look like caves), the
Mithraic mysteries as they are presented to us in the De antro and similar works
are essentially the construct of Neoplatonist (and Neopythagorean) philosophers.
The champion of this view is Robert Turcan, the title and subtitle of whose
influential Mithras Platonicus: recherches sur I'helle'nisation philosophique de Mithra
(1975) say it all.

The issue of my disagreement with Turcan — who is right and who is wrong —
is not our immediate concern, which is rather with the heuristic implications of
the divergent views. Turcan's view implies that the Neoplatonic testimonies, since
they are unreliable witnesses for the actual Mithraic mysteries, are of little value
to the modern project of interpreting the mysteries. My view of course implies
the opposite: that the testimonies, since they are for the most part factually
accurate, are hermeneutically valuable.

However, my confidence in the accuracy of most of the Mithraic data con-
veyed by Porphyry and his colleagues and predecessors does not extend to their
interpretations, either of religion in general or of the Mithraic mysteries in
particular. Factually sound data can always be perverted — enhanced', the Neo-
platonist could say with a clear conscience — to mistaken ends. I shall maintain
that this has indeed happened and that, despite the accuracy of their data, the
Neoplatonists' construction of the mysteries is indeed, from the modern perspec-
tive, a misrepresentation.

Here I am in agreement with Turcan. We agree both on the character and on
the intent of the Neoplatonic construction of the mysteries and on its distancing
from the actual mysteries. We disagree solely on whether or not the Neoplatonic
construction is a conduit for reliable information on the latter; perhaps also on
quite how far distant were the constructed mysteries from the actual: I would give
Porphyry and company rather more credit than would Turcan for respecting the
empirical facts in constructing their model.

The Neoplatonic model of religion, apart from its own intrinsic interest, is
important because it shows us how the contemporary intelligentsia constructed
the mysteries. Moreover, their model did not vanish with the ending of antiquity
and its philosophical culture. Rather, it propagated itself into modern represen-

4 Beck 1984: 2055-6; 1988: 42, n. 93 (cf. pp. 92-4), 80-2; 1994a: 106-7; 2000: 158-9, 177-9.

46 Doctrine Redefined

tations of what a mystery religion should and should not be. In other words, the
ancient philosophical template for 'mysteries' is still applied. When coupled with
similar preconceptions transferred from the Christian mysteries, the ancient
philosophical model has seriously distorted modern representations of the mys-
teries — and nowhere more seriously than with regard to 'doctrine'. We therefore
need to look at the Neoplatonic construction of the mysteries with some care.

In the De antro, as elsewhere, Porphyry assumes that religion, or rather what
matters in religion, is (1) the product of the sages of the past and (2) compre-
hensible and fully meaningful in the present only to the wise. Mysteries, then,
represent an intellectual elite calling to an intellectual elite across the gulf of time.
The meanings transmitted by the wise and deciphered by the wise are primarily
allegorical: what certain symbols 'really' mean at a higher, that is, philosophical,
metaphysical, theological, level. These meanings may or may not be compre-
hended by the cult initiate who employs them. It scarcely matters, for the
meanings are entirely independent of the initiate who handles, speaks, or
otherwise apprehends them. One can access them just as well, perhaps better,
from the text of Homer, which is precisely what Porphyry does in the work whose
full title is On the Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey. Homer has his honoured,
indeed pre-eminent, place among the ancients (palaioi) and theologians {theolo-
goi) on whom Porphyry so often draws for the truth behind material symbols and
symbolic practices. 5

The co-option of the mysteries into an autonomous intellectual tradition had
two unfortunate consequences (unfortunate, that is, from the modern perspec-
tive of the accurate reconstruction of ancient religion). First, ownership of
the mysteries passed from the actual workaday initiates to an imagined quasi-
philosophical elite. Secondly, the core of the mysteries was metamorphosed into
doctrine, arcane wisdom transmitted from the wise to the wise. Ideal intellectual
filiations were extended into remote times and places, where their sources and the
founts of their wisdom could be traced to antique sages, usually of the Orient or
Egypt. 6 Thus Zoroaster, 'prophet' of the Persian mysteries, was reconstructed on
the pattern of a Greek philosopher, indeed as the putative teacher of Greek
philosophers. 7 In this way the Mysteries/mysteries of Mithras, as a real-life
human enterprise, were misrepresented both socially and cognitively. Modern
scholarship still lives with the consequences of this distortion.

5 On 'Homer the theologian' see Lamberton's book of that title (1986). On the ancient
philosophical construction of an Ur- religion see Boys-Stones 2001.

6 On this 'alien wisdom' see Momigliano 1975.

7 The classic study of the ancient reconstruction of Zoroaster is Bidez and Cumont 1938 (note
the title: Les Mages helle'nise's: Zoroastre, Ostanes et Hystaspe d'apres la tradition grecque); see also Beck
1991: 521-39, esp. 525; Kingsley 1990, 1995 (both on earlier, i.e., pre-Neoplatonic, Greek
constructions). That the real-life Mithraists also looked to Zoroaster as their founder we may
legitimately infer from Porphyry, De antro 6; that they further encumbered him with much, or
indeed any, of the baggage of the extant Zoroastrian pseudepigrapha, I very much doubt.

Doctrine Redefined 47

The ancient construction of exotic religion is nicely caught in the first book of
Origen's Contra Celsum (1.9 ff). Origen is there defending Christianity against
the familiar charge that it exalts blind faith over reason. While stoutly champion-
ing the necessity for, and the virtue of, faith among the humble and intellectually
challenged (and shrewdly counter-charging that adhesion to a philosophical
school often involves a leap of faith and passionate rather than reasoned convic-
tion), Origen concedes all of his opponent's principal points about what religion
should be and ideally is: a rational, cognitive enterprise, of which the philosoph-
ical school is the paradigm and which is traceable to a philosophical founder. As
well as protesting that Christianity too has its intellectuals, Origen criticizes
Celsus for excluding Judaism (of which Christianity for Origen is the proper
continuation) from the honour roll, despite the high standing of its founder
Moses and the Mosaic law. The criticism is warranted, for Moses and the law do
indeed fit the ancient paradigm of proper and reasonable religion, a fact, says
Origen, which the Neopythagorean Numenius is to be complimented on for
appreciating (1.15). 8 In excluding Judaism, and therefore Christianity, Celsus
must have some other — and unpleasant — axe to grind. Origen is probably right. 9

Our main concern, however, is with the substantial agreement of Origen,
Celsus, and Numenius that religions, in particular the exotic, non-civic cults and
mysteries, are constituted on the one hand of a rational elite and, on the other, of
a vulgar membership incapable of intellectual endeavour beyond the most
rudimentary. Social status, it is understood, generally correlates with intellectual
status. In the first of two references to Mithraism in this part of the Contra Celsum
(1.9), Origen says that Celsus classed the Mithraists entirely with the latter
group, the vulgar 'believers'. But in the second reference (1.12), to which
I drew attention in Chapter 1 (sect. 1), both classes 'among the Persians' are
engaged in the teletai. 10 These mysteries of initiation are 'cultivated rationally'
(logikos presbeuomenai) by the erudite, but expressed symbolically {symbolikos
ginomenai) by the 'common, rather shallow people'. The differentiation is actu-
ally more complex than a mere contrast between more and less sophisticated
interpretations of the mysteries, but the primary distinction is clear: the erudite
'cultivate' the mysteries 'rationally'; common, shallow people do not. Whatever it
is that the latter do — and we shall return to it later — it is not an activity of reason.
The distinction is perhaps clearer in Egyptian religion as Origen explicates it
before turning to the 'Persian' teletai: 'Egyptian wise men who have studied their
traditional writings give profound philosophical interpretations of what they

8 Numenius was an extreme xenophile, going so far as to call Plato an 'Atticizing Moses' (Fr. 8
Des Places, cf. la).

9 As Boys-Stones's study (2001) amply demonstrates, there was a nasty strain of what we would
now call anti-Semitism running through the ancient philosophical construction of the Ur-religion.

10 Though he likely thought he was speaking of actual Persians, Celsus is referring to Roman
Mithraism, the most accessible form of 'Persian' religion to a Greek or Roman writer.

48 Doctrine Redefined

regard as divine, while the common people hear certain myths of which they are
proud, although they do not understand the meaning' (ibid., trans. Chadwick).

Now modern scholarship has of course long since deconstructed the ancient
stereotype of Zoroaster and his ilk as the source of philosophical or quasi-
philosophical traditions. Whatever they were, we now know that they were not
Greek thinkers in disguise. We are also both more interested in, and less
contemptuous of, the 'common people'. Nevertheless, the old paradigm of an
intellectual elite transmitting doctrine over the heads of an unenlightened rank-
and-file still haunts us. But since the facts, as modern research has revealed them,
no longer appear to support the paradigm, its two elements have been uncoupled
and inquiries into them are pursued independently or in uneasy juxtaposition:
into Mithraic doctrine on the one hand, and into the social profile and cult
activities of the membership — the relatively humble membership — on the other.
On balance, the latter approach has probably been the more fruitful, although it
has not been the dominant one historically and its successes are more recent.

One solution, as we have already noticed, is to divorce much of the doctrine
from the Mysteries and to return it to the philosophers. Robert Turcan (1975)
takes this route, at the end of which we find not Mithras but Mithras Platonicus,
and not Mithraism but the 'hellenisation philosophique de Mithra'. 11

Another solution is to find systematic and coherent doctrine in the Mysteries
but to treat it as somehow generically Mithraic, skirting the difficult question of
whether real-life Mithraists or groups of Mithraists could possibly have held it —
and if so, which groups and what sorts of individuals. As we saw in the preceding
chapter, an indubitable residuum of things Persian in the Mysteries and a better
knowledge of what constituted actual Mazdaism have allowed modern scholars
to postulate for Roman Mithraism a continuing Iranian theology. This indeed is
the main line of Mithraic scholarship, the Cumontian model which subsequent
scholars accept, modify, or reject. 12 For the transmission of Iranian doctrine from
East to West, Cumont postulated a plausible, if hypothetical, intermediary: the
Magusaeans of the Iranian diaspora in Anatolia. 13 More problematic, and never
properly addressed by Cumont or his successors, is how real-life Roman
Mithraists subsequently maintained a quite complex and sophisticated Iranian
theology behind an occidental facade. Other than the images at Dura of the two
'magi' with scrolls, 14 there is no direct and explicit evidence for the carriers of
such doctrines. The argument, then, is essentially a priori: establish the doctrine

11 This, of course, is not Turcan's sole mode of treating 'doctrine 1 in the Mysteries. For the fuller
picture see Turcan 2000: 93-1 14 (cf. Beck 1984: 2078 f.).

12 Cumont 1899, 1903/1913, elaborated in Bidez and Cumont 1938. Though with numerous
modifications and nuances, M. J. Vermaseren (1960/1963) and R. Turcan (2000) have remained
essentially within this tradition. For a brief overview see Beck 1984: 2003—8, 2056-79.

13 Cumont 1903: 11-32; cf. Beck 1991: 492 f, 539-50.

14 V22a, 22b. The figures, in any case, are probably images of ideal rather than real conveyors of
hieroi logoi.

Doctrine Redefined 49

(from a reading of the monuments and their iconography), and infer doctrine-
holders therefrom. The more abstruse the doctrine, the more sophisticated the
doctrine-holders implied. 15 So the shades of the magi return to the Mysteries, not
as Greek philosophers but as Mazdaists metamorphosed into the leaders of the
Roman cult.

The other pattern for a doctrinal elite is the astronomical or astrological. Here
again the starting point is the iconography of the monuments which, as we also
saw in the preceding chapter (sect. 4), do indeed exhibit a remarkable array of
overt and covert astronomical symbols. Systematic astronomical/astrological
doctrine is then deduced, which in turn implies learned doctrine-holders. With
David Ulansey's hypothesis (1989/1991) that Mithraism descends from those
who made a religion out of the phenomenon now known as the precession of the
equinoxes, the point has been reached at which the underlying astronomy is so
arcane that both doctrine and doctrine-holders have become quite implausible. 16

Meanwhile, solid and less controversial work has been pursued on the social
construction of the Mysteries, 17 and a bias towards this line of research has been
reinforced by the perception that the quest for doctrine has been rather too
speculative and its results unsound. The studies of Manfred Clauss typify this
reaction (1990/2000, 1992). 18

Most revealing is the response of N. M. Swerdlow (1991) to the astronomical/
astrological interpretations of the Mysteries. Swerdlow in effect redeploys the
ancient paradigm of doctrine in a mystery religion, not in the old Numenian way
as an imagined ideal, but rather as an implicit intellectual and social standard
against which Mithraism may be judged — and found wanting. The ancient
paradigm, as we have seen, made two assumptions: first, that a proper mystery,
as a quasi-philosophy, has at its core a rational, coherent, intellectually compre-
hended system; second, that the system is the preserve of a learned elite. 19 Only
on criteria such as these can Swerdlow move directly from his dismissal of
Mithraism's astronomy and astrology as a superficial and unsystematic farrago

15 The extreme case for Mithraic doctrine as a thoroughgoing translation of Iranian thought is
made by L. A. Campbell (1968). A. D. H. Bivar (1999) dispenses with the translation by
postulating a single form of 'esoteric Mithraism' spanning East and West.

16 Ulansey 1989; on the implausibility see Beck 1994^: 36-40. I have to acknowledge that my
own earlier studies of the cult's astronomy/ astrology were to some extent guilty of the fault of which
I now complain: insufficient attention paid to the doctrine-holders implied by the postulated
doctrines — and indeed to the whole question of what one can realistically intend by 'doctrine' in
the Mithras cult.

17 See esp. Gordon 1972, Liebeschuetz 1994.

18 See esp. the explicit criticisms in the foreword to the former (2000: p. xx) and the all-out
assault on Ulansey's historiographic methods in Clauss 200 1 .

19 Not surprisingly, the criteria are those which ancient mathematical astronomy, of which
Swerdlow is a distinguished historian, happens to meet. Astronomy, qua science, is nothing if not
a rational, coherent, intellectually comprehended system, and in antiquity its more recherche
reaches (such as the theory of precession, the matter primarily at issue between Swerdlow and
Ulansey) were indeed the preserve of a tiny specialized elite.

50 Doctrine Redefined

to his astonishing conclusions: first, that the cult was not a real religion
(' . . . nothing much, and perhaps not a serious religion after all'); and second,
that its members, now stripped of doctrinal pretensions, were manifestly the
ignorant and the base ('a rude fraternal cult of soldiers on the frontier, many of
them adolescents, and perhaps of ancient veterans back in Rome and Ostia'). 20
Here the Mithraists' social profile — or a travesty of it — is used against them. We
are back in the mentality of a Celsus: the proletariat is incapable of sustained
rational thought and so may not aspire to religious 'seriousness'. 21 The disdain is
palpable, the anthropology jejune. 22 Of course no actual mystery did or could
measure up to the intellectual rigour and systematic coherence of mathematical
astronomy. More tellingly, it would have had no interest in doing so. The
doctrines of the Mithraic Mysteries were neither translated science nor science
manquee. 25 That does not mean that they were not, among other things, serious
cognitive enterprises, capable of drawing eclectically and intelligently on the
science of their times.

6. MITHRAIC DOCTRINE AND ITS STAKEHOLDERS:
VARIOUS VIEWS

The positions of Ulansey and Swerdlow exemplify two extreme views of Mith-
raism and its adherents: on the one side, a doctrinal system based on the most
rarified astronomy; on the other, the mindless good cheer of the soldiery in their

20 Swerdlow 1991: 62. Though with a certain reluctance (for he finds it better argued), Swerdlow
also bids farewell to 'Cumont's Iranian interpretation' (ibid.). If Mithraism is no more than 'a rude
fraternal cult of soldiers', it cannot harbour a crypto-Mazdean elite either.

21 Somewhat illogically, the possibility of a 'great popular religion' is allowed (Swerdlow 1991:
62). It is clear from context that Christianity is intended. 'Great' and 'popular' ought to be mutually
exclusive; but, presumably, weight of numbers, success, and a highly literate leadership eventually
confer respectability on the humbler followers. The Christian perspective is important to Swerdlow,
for it is from the near silence of the church fathers concerning Mithraism that he deduces the latter 's
negligibility (ibid.): Mithraism was not a 'serious' religion because contemporary Christian authors
did not treat it seriously. One may fairly argue that Christian silence implies that the Christians did
not perceive Mithraism as a serious competitor; alternatively, that Mithraism was barely noticed
because it maintained a low profile (which is certainly true); but that Mithraism was intrinsically
non-serious only follows with the aid of a further concealed premise: that the Christian fathers are
privileged as objective judges of 'seriousness'. The comparative study of religion has long since
moved on from such casual parti pris.

22 Even as characterized in Swerdlow's dismissive final paragraph (1991: 62 f.), an unbiased
cultural anthropologist or comparative religionist would surely recognize in the Mysteries a system
of considerable depth and complexity.

23 In this Swerdlow (1991) was entirely right. Contra Ulansey, Mithraism harboured no
astronomical arcana, such as precession, at its core. Perceptively, Swerdlow traces facile astronomical
reductionism of this sort back two centuries to the Origine de tons les cultes, ou religion universelle of
Charles Francois Dupuis (ibid. 54—6). Would that Swerdlow himself had not swung so heedlessly to
the opposite extreme! There is a middle ground between astronomical arcana and 'mumbo-jumbo'.

Doctrine Redefined 5 1

mock grottos'. 24 Between these improbable poles there are of course paradigms
which accord Mithraism a more realistic measure of doctrinal knowledge. Up to
a point, Cumont's Iranian paradigm, especially in Turcan's modified form, 25 is
certainly plausible. Three other approaches also merit attention.

First, Reinhold Merkelbach (1965; 1984: 193-244) has delineated a cosmol-
ogy for the cult which is basically in the Platonic tradition and thus occidental. It
does not imply an unrealistically high level of learning. The surviving Iranian
elements are accommodated by postulating a founding individual from the
borders of the empire, working specifically in Rome but steeped in the religious
traditions of Iran. 26 Following Merkelbach (and Cumont, in that I too look to
Anatolia and Anatolians), I have proposed a tentative profile of the cult's found-
ing group as centred on the retainers, military and civilian, of the Commagenian
royal family at the time of its participation in the Judaean and Civil Wars and
subsequent exile in Rome (Beck 1998a:). These, then, would be the hypothetical
doctrine-holders of the first generation of Mithraists, combining the 'farrago' —
the term need not be pejorative — of Graeco-Roman and Persian learning
detectable in the Mysteries and their monuments. The scenario has additional
plausibility in that the Commagenian dynasty had acquired as a kinsman by
marriage the foremost astrologer-politician of the times, Ti. Claudius Balbillus.
Balbillus may be viewed as the source of Mithraism's astrology (Beck 1998a:
126 f; 2001: 67-71; 2004c: 324-9). Alternatively, taking an analogical rather
than a genealogical approach, Balbillus' astrology and that of his probable father,
Ti. Claudius Thrasyllus, may be viewed as exemplary of the astrology available in
the culture of the times to a new religion interested in such matters.

Secondly, a substantial comparative assessment of Mithraic doctrine in relation
to the other mystery cults and the philosophies of the times was undertaken by
Ugo Bianchi (1979a) and Giulia Sfameni Gasparro (1979a, b, c) in the context of
the International Seminar on the Religio-Historical Character of Roman Mith-
raism. 27 In addition to the apparatus, doctrinal and otherwise, of a mystery cult
(its 'mysteric' aspects), Bianchi and Sfameni Gasparro detected a relatively
sophisticated, pervasive, and systematic 'mysteriosophy'. This mysteriosophy,
they found, was focused on 'ascent', both in a general way as movement from
lower to higher levels in the cosmos and in the particular sense of the initiate's
ascent through the esoteric grades and through the spheres of heaven. 28 What

24 Swerdlow 1991: 62.

25 See above, n. 1 1.

26 Merkelbach 1984: 77, 160 f. Merkelbach acknowledges his debt to Nilsson (1967/1974:
675 f.) for the idea of a founding 'genius'.

27 Held in Rome in 1978; the seminar was the third in a series of international conferences on
Mithraism.

28 See esp. Sfameni Gasparro's concluding paragraph (\979c: 407 f); also the seminar's 'final
statement' (Bianchi 1979: pp. xiv— xviii).

52 Doctrine Redefined

concerns us here is not so much the specifics of the mysteriosophy as the fact that
the Mithraists were deemed sufficiently intelligent to have had one. 29

At the time of the International Seminar (1979) the working assumption was
that there was doctrine in the Mysteries, that it was probably fairly coherent and
probably widespread throughout the cult. Nowadays one would not start with
that assumption — which brings us to the third approach, the one currently
predominant. This approach questions whether one can properly speak of
Mithraic doctrine in a general sense and without qualification. To be sure, few
would deny the existence of a loose 'cluster of ideas' 30 which must be deemed
generically Mithraic because they are vouched for empire-wide by the cult's
material remains. The universality of the standard cult icon, for example, implies
some minimum of universally held ideas, coherent or incoherent, on the whys
and wherefores of Mithras' bull-killing. But beyond that minimum, why assume
a coherent, systematic, universal Mithraic doctrine? Why, indeed, use the term
'doctrine' at all, with its implications of an integrated system deliberately trans-
mitted?

These are reasonable questions, and they seem all the more so in the post-
modern critical age. Nowadays we tend to discount the very idea of 'doctrine' as a
religious category, something which, in principle at least, can be objectively
determined for a given religion. We are interested in it (if at all) as proxy
discourse in the negotiation of power relations, not as what it superficially claims
to be, an autonomous system of beliefs and claims to knowledge.

The new sceptical approach to Mithraic doctrine tends to explain the appear-
ance of ideological concerns on the monuments, beyond the standard and the
commonplace, as the speculative initiatives of local leaderships: doctrinal flot-
sam, rather than the peaks of some great submerged ideological continent.
A recent study by Turcan of the Mithraic grade structure and astrology (1999),
limiting the correlation of the seven grades and the seven planets and even the
sevenfold hierarchy itself to Rome and Ostia during the restricted time span of
their documentation there, exemplifies the approach. In the much wider context
of their Religions of Rome (1998), Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price set
out a very reasonable paradigm of this approach, posed as a question of cult
'homogeneity', doctrinal and otherwise: 31

By and large, however, in discussing the religions of the empire we have tried to avoid
thinking in terms of uniformity, or in terms of a central core 'orthodox' tradition with its

29 It is worth bearing in mind that A. D. Nock, in his influential article 'The genius of
Mithraism', gave as one of the cult's six definitive features the possession of 'its own cosmogony
and eschatology' (1937: 111). 'Furthet, other mystery-teligions could be interpteted by the use of
Greek philosophic concepts; but in Mithtaism, as in Judaism and Christianity, there was what
seemed a core or philosophy. 1 In doctrine, it seems, Nock was of the opinion that Mithraism should
be bt igaded with Judaism and Cht istianity rather than with its pagan peers among the mystety cults.

3° For the term, BNP 1: 249.

" BNP 1: 248 f, 278, 301-12 (quotation at p. 249).

Doctrine Redefined 53

peripheral 'variants'; we have preferred to think rather in terms of different religions as
clusters of ideas, people and rituals, sharing some common identity across time and place,
but at the same time inevitably invested with different meanings in their different
contexts.

My own position is not that far removed: that the Mysteries were loosely
disseminated and maintained by largely autonomous leaders best described as
ideological colporteurs. 32

That said, there were, I maintain, if not 'orthodoxies', then demonstrable
norms. 33 These norms were more widespread, more systematic, and more so-
phisticated intellectually than the now predominant type of inquiry supposes.
The new approach has rendered a great service in that it has discredited the old
and lazy assumption of free-floating, generic 'Mithraic doctrine'. But it has
perhaps gone too far to the other extreme in restricting ideas, other than the
very basic and standard, to the narrow circles of Mithraists immediately associ-
ated with the monuments from which the ideas are inferred. There is often,
I argue, good reason to postulate some more generalized teaching, even when the
particular monument from which one starts, such as the Mainz ritual vessel or the
Seven Spheres mithraeum in Ostia, is untypical.

7. DOCTRINE AND BELIEF: THE CHRISTIAN 'FAITH'

PARADIGM

In Chapter 2 (sect. 2) we noticed how doctrine is the ultimate goal of Cumontian
heuristics, which we may characterize as follows: From the monuments, recon-
struct not only (1) a sacred narrative, which is the myth of Mithras, but also (2) a
doctrine, which is what the monuments intend over and above their literal
referents. The doctrine so deciphered is the faith of the Mithraists, their religion.
That Mithraism and even its antecedent forms were 'faiths' with 'doctrines' in
which its initiates 'believed' was axiomatic to Cumont. In this 'faith model', as we
might term it, Mithraism and the other mystery cults (Christianity included), in
contrast to the public cults of paganism, evolved as religious systems of 'belief.
Their initiates not only gave their confidence and devotion to the respective gods
of the cults ('belief in) but also subscribed intellectually to notions, of greater or
less sophistication, expressed or expressible in propositional form, concerning
those gods and their roles in the cosmos and in relation to mankind ('belief that').
Accordingly, the interpreter's task, which Cumont saw as part of the 'scientific'
study of religion, is to reconstruct and elucidate those beliefs, presenting them as
the 'doctrines' of the cults. 'Doctrine' is belief objectified, existing independently

32 The term is Richard Gordon's (1994: 463). 33 Beck 2000: 170 f.

54 Doctrine Redefined

of the individual believer; it is the matter of esoteric instruction, what the believer
is taught to believe.

How the dynamics of 'faith, 'belief, and 'doctrine' animated Cumont's model
can be vividly illustrated by a passage from his Mysteries ofMithra (1903/1956:
30-1) which I have already quoted (above, Ch. 3, sect. 3). I repeat the quotation
as Luther Martin (1994: 217) presented it in an article whose explicit aim was
to escape the preconceptions about doctrine and beliefs in Cumontian and post-
Cumontian interpretation:

The basal layer of this religion ... is the faith (Jot) of ancient Iran . . . [upon which] was
deposited in Babylon a thick sediment of Semitic doctrines (doctrines) , and afterwards the
local beliefs (croyances) of Asia Minor. . . Finally, a luxuriant vegetation of Hellenic ideas
(ide'es) burst forth from this fertile soil . . . (Martin's italics, French terms from Cumont
1913: 27 in parentheses)

Noteworthy here is the layering of beliefs: not only was Mithraism a faith, but it
also evolved by accretion of earlier faiths, a process strikingly captured in the
geological/botanical metaphor.

Clearly, Christianity was the paradigm. The Cumontian model was cloned
from the then dominant model of early Christianity, not deliberately but simply
because that was the way the late nineteenth-century Western mind confronted
religion. If you could make the case that a religion was doctrine-centred, then it
was self-evidently a faith in which its initiates believed, and so could be brigaded
with Christianity over against the sacrifice-centred pieties of the ancient public
cults. It helped of course that Mithraism in its Roman form was an almost exact
contemporary of Christianity. Both originated in the first century ce (Mithraism
a decade or so later than its peer), and both grew and flourished within the same
cultural milieu.

As Cumont's Christian contemporaries immediately recognized, his paradigm
of Mithraism was not only very similar to theirs of Christianity, but also, when
coupled with a narrative of Mithraism's evolution from Iranian Mazdaism,
downright threatening. For if Mithraism could be explained as the product of
historical evolution, what was to prevent the application of the same sort of
evolutionary template to early Christianity as a sufficient explanation of its
origins and development? 34

Times change, but old models linger on, especially when there is no sensed
need for a new explanatory paradigm. The tide of secularism carried Cumont's
faith model into less controversial waters, where it stayed afloat long after it had
ceased to be the sole model entertained for early Christianity, the paradigm case.
Most notably and most influentially, Robert Turcan has not only continued to

34 The threat posed by Cumont's model was serious enough to block his appointment to the
instructorship in Roman history at Gand/Ghent to which the scholarly world thought him entitled.
The matter was even debated in the Belgian Senate. The full story and its implications are related by
Corinne Bonnet (2000).

Doctrine Redefined 5 5

use the language of 'faith', 'doctrine', and 'belief in treating of the Mithraic
mysteries but has also perpetuated thereby the assumptions concerning the
mysteries' content and mode of transmission which those terms imply. 35
I quote again a passage which we discussed briefly in an earlier chapter (Ch. 2,
sect. 2):

La bizarrerie de la representation [of a detail in the relief under discussion] doit tenir pour
une grande part au fait quelle s'efforce de transcrire par une image quelque chose d'un
enseignement philosophico-religieux. D'une part, en eflet, nous savons que le mithria-
cisme a integre, adapte certaines theories grecques, voire certains mythes grecs . . . Et
d'autre part, une caracteristique essentielle de ce culte est qu'il se repand par l'image,
moyennant une initiation et une liturgie qui comportent l'explication rituelle des images.
L'iconographie n'y a, comme on salt, aucune fin esthetique. Elle se veut porteuse d'une doctrine.
D'une extremite a I'autre du monde romain, avec certaines variantes autour de figures
fondamentales, elle vehicule un meme enseignement. C'est un langage a dechiffrer, et Ton
ne peut guere hasarder de dechiffrement qu'en se fondant sur la semantique courante des
motifs ou des attributs, en fonction de certaines idees communes au monde greco-
romain. (Turcan 1986: 221; emphasis mine)

Again I draw attention to the emphasis on doctrine as the end product of the
imagery of the monuments and on teaching {'enseignement') via the imagery, even
in a liturgical or ritual context, as the route of initiation into the mysteries. We
are back to the mithraeum as classroom.

Turcan speaks of the imagery as a 'language' of instruction. We shall return to
this perceptive analogy in a later chapter, for it poses some highly germane
questions (is it more than a metaphor, do iconographic symbols really commu-
nicate in the same way as natural language signs?). However, some implications
of this idea should be raised here. They concern the teacher and the taught in this
'language of instruction':

Les images sont un langage dont les elements sont faits pour etre compris en fonction
d'un vocabulaire commun au sculpteur et au spectateur de son oeuvre, en l'occurrence au
responsable et aux fideles de la communaute mithriaque. (1986: 220)

[The images are a language whose elements are made to be understood by means of a
vocabulary common to the sculptor and viewer of his work, in context to the person
responsible and to the faithful.]

Who, then, are the language users of the language of Mithraic iconography?
For Turcan the answer is obvious and straightforward. Those who speak and

35 Turcan is somewhat ambivalent about doctrine. In his 1986 article he seems to envisage the
mysteries primarily as a doctrinal belief system taught to initiates. Elsewhere, as we have seen in
the preceding sections of this chapter, he (1) transfers doctrine attributed to the Mithraists by the
Neoplatonists back to the same Neoplatonists, and (2) restricts what he regards as learned elabor-
ations to local Mithraic elites. Perhaps it is a matter of level: a general, intellectually undemanding
set of doctrines for ordinary initiates; more sophisticated doctrines as the optional speculations of
the learned — when not Neoplatonic inventions.

56 Doctrine Redefined

listen to the iconographic language of the mysteries are the sculptors and viewers
of the monuments; alternatively, the mithraeum's leadership (including, presum-
ably, those who commissioned and dedicated the monuments) and the 'faithful'
(note the characterization!). Of the two pairs, we should concentrate on the latter.
Since the 'figured monuments' were commissioned for internal use within the
mithraeum, never for public display, the 'viewers' and the 'faithful' were one and
the same. The sculptors (and the fresco painters), moreover, were not primary
'speakers', for they merely executed the design of 'those responsible' {responsable) .
Turcan's distinction between 'those in charge' who spoke the language of
Mithraic iconography and 'the faithful' who listened to it certainly helps us to
understand the initiates as a community of quasi-language users and their
mysteries as something communicated by a quasi-language. Nevertheless, the
distinction imports some dangerous baggage of its own, in addition to the
questionable presentation of the mysteries as a faith with a belief system and
initiation as a type of instruction. Most insidiously, the paradigm of unidirec-
tional discourse flowing from teacher to learner implies that what is encoded and
decoded via the iconography is a determinate body of information, that is,
Mithraic doctrine. Output matches input. If the language is efficient and the
teachers and learners fully competent, then the 'faithful' get from the iconog-
raphy what 'those in charge' put into the iconography, ideally without remainder.
If we read the clues aright, we too can recover that input/output. But can we?
Our explorations so far lead us to doubt whether such a goal is achievable in
practice or in principle.

8. MITHRAIC DOCTRINE: THREE MAIN ISSUES

The problem of deciphering Mithraic doctrine may be broken down into three
main issues. The first is solely a practical matter and assumes that there is
'doctrine' of whatever sort out there on the monuments awaiting decipherment.
The second and third are more theoretical and beg no questions, at least about
the nature and presence of doctrine on the monuments.

First is the issue of generalizability. What is the evidential base in the monu-
ments necessary for postulating some element of Mithraic doctrine? Is it ever
reasonable to infer some more widely held doctrinal norm from features on
relatively few monuments — or even on a single monument? If so, in what
circumstances?

The second issue is the nature of 'doctrine' itself. So far in this chapter the term
remains undefined. Yet it is not an obvious category. It is not self-evidently
something which a religion either has, in large or small measure, or doesn't
have. Nor does it stand out sharply from other aspects of a religion such as myth
and ritual. What, then, are we to understand by 'Mithraic doctrine' when and if
we postulate it for the mysteries?

Doctrine Redefined 57

The third question returns us to unfinished business from the preceding
sections: can we do better than the old dichotomous paradigm of a learned
elite (of questionable reality) and an unthinking commons? This third question is
inseparable from the second, for what we make of doctrine depends on how we
construe the doctrine-holders — and vice versa.

9. (i) GENERALIZING ABOUT MITHRAIC DOCTRINE
FROM UNUSUAL MONUMENTS

Our entry point into the question of Mithraic doctrine was from a literary
source, Porphyry's De antro with its testimony on the form and function of the
mithraeum. This of course is unusual. Since the 'monuments' of Mithraism far
outweigh the 'texts', Mithraic doctrine, as we saw in Chapter 2, is reconstructed
mostly from the monuments, especially from the rich and complex iconography
of the reliefs, frescos, and statuary. So implicated is Mithraic doctrine in the
design of the monuments that the transmission of doctrine is properly considered
a matter of the transmission of norms of design: the design of the mithraeum, the
design of the bull-killing icon, and so on. 36 In this respect, an account of
colporteurs and colportage is but another version of the traditional scholarly
narrative of the spread of Mithraism, doctrine and all. What the colporteur
transports and unpacks, the wares he puts on offer, is a bundle of designs (perhaps
literally so) for cult room and cult artefact, and a blueprint (metaphorically so)
for cult life led within and in relation to the sacred structures implicit in those
designs. So expressed, what I intend by 'Mithraic doctrine' is precisely the
Mithraic pedlar's rationale of his portfolio of designs, literal and metaphoric.
Quite properly, then, the reconstruction of doctrine, beyond what can be elicited
from the very few external literary testimonies, is largely the explication of the
contents and compositions of the monuments.

One cannot formulate in advance a hard-and-fast quantitative rule on the
volume of monumental evidence necessary to support a doctrinal principle.
Obviously, at one end of the spectrum there are features so commonplace that
one may reasonably suppose empire-wide norms. For example, the principal
elements in the tauroctony and their disposition in the scene are so standard, so
universally exemplified, that one cannot but suppose some basic underlying
teaching: for example, why Mithras is accompanied by a dog, a snake, a scorpion,
and a raven, and why these creatures are placed where they are in the composition.
What that teaching actually was is of course another question, but that explica-
tions, whether rudimentary or sophisticated, were brought by the colporteurs and
passed down through the membership of the groups seems unarguable. The
persistence of the iconographic norms implies the persistence of the underlying

*« Beck 1984: 2074-8.

58 Doctrine Redefined

doctrine, though doubtless with some fraying at the edges. No enforcement of the
norms need be presumed, merely sufficient ad hoc liaison between groups to
maintain their continuity and overall coherence. At the other extreme there are
unique or extremely rare features which are obvious transgressions. For example,
in the Moesian tauroctony (V2327) the scorpion is positioned not at the
bull's genitals but at those of Mithras: clearly the artist or the colporteur or the
local Mithraic group collectively has 'got it wrong'. Flagrantly incorrect iconog-
raphy implies misapprehension or plain forgetfulness of story and customary
explication.

Between these two extremes lies a debatable field where certain features or sets
of features are attested in a minority of monuments. They cannot be construed,
self-evidently, as empire-wide norms, but neither are they obvious aberrations.
What do we infer about their underlying rationale (assuming there was one and
that the feature in question was not just a stylistic flourish — a possibility we
should always bear in mind)? Do we infer some local or regional elaboration of
Mithraic doctrine or instead a more general element of doctrine about which, for
whatever reason, the generality of monuments is silent? The question cannot be
answered on a priori grounds, for that would simply beg it. Whether Mithraism
was a religion with a broadly coherent ideology or a religion of local options is
precisely the point at issue. The inquiry, then, must be case by case, and most
answers will be tentative. Beyond the number of occurrences and their spread,
the criteria are necessarily qualitative and ad hoc. There is no nice calculus to
deliver an answer one way or the other. With few exceptions, we shall achieve
likelihoods, not certainties.

The foremost test is coherence: do the hypothetical rationales cohere in broad
doctrinal themes? Can these themes, even in default of written documentation
(which is usually the case), be inferred from structures and features universally
current in the monuments? If so, in any given instance is it a case of theme or of
variation? When is an instance better explained as an integral element of
widespread doctrine, and when as a piece of local/regional speculation enshrined
in local/regional iconography, and so on? The process is inductive and cumula-
tive. The more we discern coherence, the greater the overall likelihood of a
corpus of doctrine, a larger rather than a smaller colporteurs pack, a submerged
continent rather than ideological flotsam. We shall find that even highly unusual
monuments, such as the Seven Spheres mithraeum and the Mainz ritual vessel,
more often than not exemplify general Mithraic doctrine rather than local
elaboration. Or, more subtly, they exemplify local elaboration of broad doctrinal
themes. Because they also tend to be unusually informative, the unusual monu-
ments are those which, carefully explicated, disclose both theme and variation. 37

37 For just this reason, several of my previous studies have focused on the explication of unusual
monuments: Beck 1976 and 1978 on the Ponza zodiac; Beck 1988 on the Ottaviano Zeno
monument (pp. 42—72) and the Barberini tauroctony (pp. 91—100); Beck 2000 on the Mainz vessel.

Doctrine Redefined 59

10. (ii) WHAT DO WE MEAN BY 'DOCTRINE' IN THE
CONTEXT OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES? AN ARRAY OF

ANSWERS

To address our second question, we should not think of doctrine as something
determinate, a body of propositions recoverable, in principle at least, in its
entirety. 'Doctrine' is at best a somewhat nebulous category. It is scarcely relevant
to much ancient religion (the public cults, for example), and in Mithraism, where
it is arguably germane, it finds expression, as we noted above, in the medium of
room design and iconography rather than creed and sacred text. We have already
characterized Mithraic doctrine as the various rationales for the designs of
mithraeum and icon imported, literally and metaphorically, by the Mithraic
colporteur. To the structures of cult room and cult icon, we need only add the
structures of cult life and authority. We might think, then, of Mithraic doctrine
as an indeterminate set of explanations which senior Mithraists would impart to
their juniors or explore among themselves: why our 'cave' is designed as it is (and
why it's a 'cave'); why this icon of our bull-killing hero is composed as it is; why
we initiate and celebrate as we do; what it means that I am a Father, he is a Lion,
and you are a Raven. 38

There are some useful lessons to be drawn from this functional paradigm of
Mithraic doctrine as explication in context. It helps to break down the old
preconception of doctrine as an autonomous category, as something self-
contained and pre-existent, which is then inserted into the monuments, like
statements of belief into a creed. Although one may argue, as I do, for broad
doctrinal themes in the mysteries, there is no reason to suppose a comprehensive
doctrine, articulated in all its parts.

Moreover, not every point of doctrine will have been expressed verbally in
written or spoken form. Mithraic doctrine, I argue, is largely implicit in struc-
tures of design in the monuments. It is not necessary to suppose that, at one time
or another and in one place or another, each and every component was explicated
by a Mithraic Father. Paradoxical though it might seem, one might well posit
Mithraic doctrine which was never given verbal expression. Doctrine in such
cases exists as a potentiality within the monuments. It is the explication that a
Mithraic Father would give, were he asked, the explication demanded by the
structural logic of his mithraeum and its icons. Recovering Mithraic doctrine is
largely a matter of tracing that internal logic.

In tracing the themes of Mithraic doctrine across the monuments, we should
not expect to uncover meanings radically different from what lies on the surface.
There is no Big Secret to be decoded, no privileged hermeneutic route to

38 The papyrus catechism P.Berol. 21 196 (Brashear 1992) is just such a dialogue in the form of
questions asked of and answered by an initiate.

60 Doctrine Redefined

doctrines more profound. Confronting the Mithraists' monuments, not a single
item of which was intended for external display, we are already within their
esoteric world, literally and physically so. We view what they viewed, we locate
ourselves, where no ancient outsider did, in their sacred space. Why, then, search
for more profound arcana? That Mithras is the Unconquered Sun, that he slew
the bull, these are the truths of the religion, patently displayed — but only within
the 'cave' — in icon and inscription. Our task in reconstructing doctrine is to
discover how these truths were apprehended and related, glossing them in
propositional language; it is not to translate them into something wholly other.
With Mithraism, as the saying goes, 'what you see is what you get'.

The pursuit of arcana is yet another of antiquity's dubious legacies to our
comprehension of the mystery cults. The assumption that every mystery has its
logos known to the wise, and thus decipherable by the wise of a later generation,
was fundamental to the ancient authorities, as we have seen. Something of the
same assumption, in modern guise, underlies the scholarly 'translations' of
Mithraism, whether into full-blown Mazdaism or into rarified astronomy. The
attraction of this sort of approach is that it 'gets results' — or appears to. Whether
by the antique philosopher's intuition or by the methods of modern research,
new facts about cult doctrine are established, and because these facts are more
than restatements of the obvious truths displayed on the monuments (Mithras
slew a bull, etc.), our comprehension is advanced — or seems to be. There are
other gains, just as illusory. The postulated doctrine is deep doctrine, so its
discovery seems to have great explicative power: it tells us what the mystery
'really' was. The modern reformulations of doctrine thus contain and control the
mystery. As the product of historical research, we seem to know what even the
most learned ancient insider could but dimly comprehend: that is the exact
theological equations which convert Iranian yazatas into the divinities of Roman
Mithraism; or, if one prefers, the precise astronomical phenomena of which
Mithras' bull-killing is the expression. Finally, there is the lure of simplicity.
David Ulansey's astronomical reconstruction (1989/1991), for example, flows
(with great elegance, it must be allowed) from two primary doctrinal 'facts': that
Mithras is the constellation Perseus and that the bull-killing encodes his cosmic
victory as the power who shifts the world's axis by means of what astronomers
term the 'precession of the equinoxes'. To know these facts, so it seems, is to know
in nuce the entire meaning of the tauroctony.

The present study has no such implicit goal. Except on the form and function
of the mithraeum, where a modicum of Mithraic doctrine in propositional form
is recoverable from Porphyry's De antro, our explorations will necessarily be
tentative and our findings inconclusive and lacking coherence in the same
measure that Mithraic doctrine was itself inchoate and not fully coherent. This
is a fault neither in the mysteries nor in their explication. It resides in the nature
of the thing studied and the appropriate way of studying it. Accordingly, I cannot
leave the reader with a satisfying sense of easy comprehension ('Ah, so that is what

Doctrine Redefined 6 1

it was really all about!'). No mystery can be translated into a neat set of
propositions about something else. Plutarch, commenting on the seasonal and
agricultural explanations of Isis and Osiris, long ago exposed reductionism of
that sort as a strategy for reassurance which gives the illusion of intellectual
mastery by substitution of the familiar for the unfamiliar (On Isis and Osiris
64-7). Consequently, the coming chapters, while they engage with and explore
what may legitimately be called Mithraic 'doctrine', do not pretend to decipher it
in a definitive and comprehensive way. If that is the expectation, these chapters
will inevitably disappoint.

Mithraic doctrine is not an autonomous and self-contained ideological do-
main. Quite the contrary, its territory lies squarely in the thought world of the
times. Consequently, much of it is recoverable by reference to common intellec-
tual systems which have left their signatures on the records of the cult. One such
system is astrology. Astrology is a system whose articulation and significations we
know from extant treatises, some of them (e.g. Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos and the
Anthologies of Vettius Valens) contemporaneous with the heyday of the Mysteries.
Consequently, traces of technical astrology on the monuments, for example of
the system of 'houses' correlating planets and signs, are especially informative, for
they illuminate what is esoteric and unknown by means of what is exoteric and
known. 39 The more precise the astrology implicated, the greater its explicative
power. On the same premise, that the Mysteries cannot have constituted an
entirely closed doctrinal system, I make frequent appeal to the 'encyclopaedia',
antiquity's store of accumulated knowledge, the body of facts about the world
which 'everyone knows', best exemplified in compendia such as Pliny's Natural
History or Aelian's On the Nature of Animals. These were not of course real facts,
as we understand them scientifically; rather, they were agreed constructions, the
consensus, for example, on 'lions' or 'ravens' or 'hyenas'. For that very reason they
are indispensable if we are to comprehend Mithraic Lions and Ravens as the
Mithraists comprehended them or to understand why 'they called women
"hyenas'" (Porphyry, De abstinentia 4.16). 40 The mind world of the Mithraists
was peopled with such constructs. In that respect it will have differed little from
the mind world of their enveloping culture. Necessarily, even their most esoteric
doctrine will have been but reformulations, new 'takes' on old truths expressed
largely in the common idiom. This is not to deny the Mithraists originality,
but merely to acknowledge the constraints within which doctrinal creativity
operates. It is the common idiom that affords us the possibility of access. Had
Mithraic doctrine been strictly and solely esoteric, it would indeed be literally
incomprehensible.

39 On the use of ancient astrology and astronomy to interpret the monuments and thus to
elucidate doctrine, see particularly Beck 1976a, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1988, 1994a, 1994£, 2000.

40 The concept of the 'encyclopaedia 1 , together with the examples cited was introduced by
Richard Gordon (1980£, see esp. n. 8) drawing on Sperber 1975: 91-110.

62 Doctrine Redefined

Finally, we should bear in mind that 'doctrine', formulated as a set of
propositions, is sometimes just a proxy — a necessary scholar's proxy — for de-
scribing what is apprehended by the initiates not as information imparted in
propositional form, but in other modes altogether. Truly to comprehend the
'meaning' of the Mysteries was to experience them by sight, hearing, and action
in the context of the mithraeum and its ritual. Only thus would that extraordin-
ary array of visual symbols 'make sense'. We may think of this as a form of
cognition, but not as the assimilation of propositional knowledge, or at least not
primarily so. To know your 'cave' as cosmos was not to take lessons about it.
Lessons there may have been, but that is not what our gateway text, Porphyry's De
antro (6), tells us: the Mithraists 'perfect the initiate' (telousi ton mysten) not by
teaching but 'by inducting him in a mystery (mystagogountes) into the 'descent and
departure of souls'. In 'reconstructing doctrine' we are not really aiming to
recover a lost system of propositional knowledge, but rather to recapture and
express in scholars' language — thus necessarily in propositional language — some-
thing of the mystagdgia of the Mithraic 'cave'.

My contextual definition of 'doctrine' will perhaps seem frustratingly vague.
This is unfortunate — but unavoidable. A crisper definition would merely return
us to the old preconception of doctrine as an explicit body of knowledge which,
at least in principle, can be reassembled in its original form, just as a material
object — a pot for example — can be reconstructed, given enough sherds and the
restorer's expertise. But doctrine in that concrete, self-contained form never
existed in the Mithras cult, and it would be misleading to imply by definition
that it can be recaptured as such. Nevertheless, if something more succinct is
looked for, it may be extrapolated, appropriately enough, from an ancient
account of the institution of a mystery cult. In his On his and Osiris (27), as
we saw in Chapter 1, Plutarch relates how the goddess herself founded her
mysteries by 'mixing into the holiest rituals images, thoughts, and imitations of
her former experiences' (tats hagiotatais anamixasa teletais eikonas kai hyponoias
kai mimemata ton tote pathematon) . Doctrine, we might say, is that central term
hyponoia, the 'under-thought' which is the realization of the mysteries in the
mode of cognition, just as their visual realization is the icon and their performa-
tive realization the ritual. 41 We, of course, must treat the mysteries as a human
rather than divine institution, but Plutarch's pious attribution of them to the
goddess, for all its apparent naivety, accommodates a truth which we would do
well to remember: that 'doctrine' is an expression of the mysteries, not vice versa;
it is elicited from them (largely from their constituent 'images' and 'imitations'),
not built into them, by their human expounders.

41 A strict differentiation between visual 'images' and performed 'imitations' was probably not
intended by Plutarch. It is, though, a reasonable refinement of his meaning.

Doctrine Redefined 63

11. (iii) DOCTRINE AND THE ORDINARY INITIATE

The looser conception of doctrine proposed above may help us break out of the
old stereotypes of leaders with intellect and followers without. As long as doctrine
is considered to be a systematic and formulated body of knowledge, one has to
presuppose a learned elite whose possession it was. Consequently, a gulf is opened
up between the leaders and the led, the guardians of doctrine and those nurtured
on less-intellectual fare. This false dichotomy can be avoided by abandoning the
search for a lost body of comprehensive knowledge, but without going to the
other extreme of dismissing the Mysteries as intellectually trivial. Instead, doc-
trine can be discerned in the Mysteries and its ownership located with the
generality of members if we construe it not as a monolithic, logically articulated
system, but as a diffuse network of ideas, many of them implicit in the structure
of the monuments, many of them mere potentialities for thought, which each
initiate would apprehend in a manner appropriate to status, context, and
occasion.

It is easy enough to envisage doctrine as explanations given or rationales
explored by the Fathers of Mithraic groups. Less straightforward is the appre-
hension of doctrine by the ordinary cult member in situations other than the
formal giving and receiving of instruction as in a catechism. 42 If we keep context
in mind, however, our question 'what is doctrine?' might fruitfully be rephrased
as follows: how, intellectually, did the ordinary Mithraist apprehend (1) the
sacred environment of his 'cave' qua 'image of the universe', (2) its sacred
furniture ('proportionately arranged') and especially the dominant icon of the
bull-killing, (3) the ritual actions which he and his cult brothers performed
therein, and (4) the esoteric relationships with cult brothers and with the deity
into which he had entered as an initiate and which were played out in the
ongoing life of the mithraeum? These are the familiar 'doctrinal' questions of
cosmology, theology, soteriology, and hierarchy reformulated with reference to
their principal stakeholder in his proper environment, the ordinary Mithraist in
the Mithraic 'cave'.

12. CONCLUSION

In the preceding sections we have, as it were, unpacked or unbundled doctrine. 43 In
place of doctrine as a definite body of explicit teaching, we have re-characterized
it as a loose web of interpretation, both actual and potential, located in the symbol
system of the mysteries. A piece of doctrine, in this sense, is legitimated (1) by its

42 P.Berol. 21 196 (Brashear 1992) appears to confirm such occasions in the life of the Mysteries.

43 Had the term not become suspect, we might say that we had deconstructed it.

64 Doctrine Redefined

coherence with other pieces on the web, and (2) by being what the local Father
approved, or would approve if asked, with an assumption that most of his peers, if
asked, would likewise approve. That the minds of Mithraic Fathers are now
inaccessible does not matter, for we seek only to define doctrine, not to rule on
whether a particular idea was or was not a point of doctrine. Indeed, the latter is
precisely the trap we want to avoid. Nor does it matter that we define as pieces of
'doctrine' certain elements which may never have undergone explicit verbal
formulation and actual consent in real time. That merely shows that Mithraism
managed to retain its norms without recourse to expensive and contentious
synods. In this regard the Mithraic solution seems to me superior to the Christian
solution in that it reached consensus without coercion. No blood was spilled, as
far as we know, in reconciling the singularity of the Sun with the distinct personae
of Sol and Mithras.

Transition: from old ways to new ways

In these last four chapters we have completed the necessary preparations for the
hermeneutic road ahead. In the first stage of this journey (Chapter 5) we shall
begin to explore the symbol system in which Mithraic doctrine, in our redefined
sense, was located. Our method will be based on symbolist anthropology and in
particular the approach of Clifford Geertz. We shall see how the symbol system of
the Mithraic mysteries functions as an expression of the ethos and world view of
the Mithraists' culture, itself a subset of the surrounding Graeco-Roman culture
of the imperial age. Since this approach thrives on comparison, I shall make
extensive use of a comparison culture. I have selected for our comparator the
culture of the Chamulas, an indigenous Mexican people whose ethos and
world view stem from a fusion of missionary Christianity with local Mayan
sun worship.

Since symbols function in their apprehension — strictly speaking, there is no
such thing as a symbol without someone to apprehend it as such — we next
explore in a general way what apprehending a symbol system entails (Chapter 6).
Here I introduce the methods of the new 'cognitive science of religion', in
particular the approaches of Pascal Boyer and Dan Sperber and the latter's theory
of culture as an 'epidemic' of representations.

At this stage we will be ready to explore (Chapter 7) the complex of symbols
which is the mithraeum. We shall examine its blueprint as an 'image of the
universe' and see how it functions as the instrument for 'inducting the initiates
into a mystery of the descent of souls and their exit back out again' (Porphyry De
antro 6).

In the chapter following (8) we turn to 'star-talk as the postulated idiom of the
mysteries (Proposition F in our 'template for the re-description of the mysteries'
in Chapter 1). I shall show how in an unusual, perhaps unique, way the astral
symbols of the mysteries function together as quasi-language signs. That is a very
risky claim, because on the whole I agree with Dan Sperber's argument (1975)
that symbols do not 'mean', at least not in the sense that words and strings of
words do. However, I shall maintain that the claim is warranted by the ease with
which reading the symbols of the mysteries as ordered language signs led in the
previous chapter (7) to an understanding of the precise form and function of the

66 From Old Ways to New

mithraeum. In other words, the mithraeum communicates meaning through the
medium of its complex of symbols. As supporting evidence I shall also show that
although the concept of 'star-talk' might seem bizarre to us today, to the ancients
the idea of talking stars and a celestial text was far from strange. If the mithraeum
was a true image of the universe, its ancient initiates would expect it to replicate
among other properties the rationality of its grand original.

The penultimate chapter (9) brings us to the symbol complex which is the
tauroctony, the image of the bull-killing Mithras and the cult's principal icon. My
explication of the tauroctony will be informed by all the methods and approaches
introduced in the preceding chapters. But let there be no false expectations. The
tauroctony conveys no message of the sort which can be simply stated in a
sentence or paragraph. Or rather, its message is what we and the initiates have
known all along: deus sol invictus mithras. The task is to discern not what
the tauroctony says but bow it says it.

In the course of these chapters I shall also reintroduce, albeit in a somewhat
piecemeal fashion, the categories of our descriptive template for the Mithraic
mysteries summarized in Chapter 1: axioms or ultimate sacred postulates (the
first of which is the formula displayed above, the second the principle of
'harmony of tension in opposition'), motifs, domains, structures, modes, and
the idiom of 'star- talk. To 'star-talk, as already explained, I devote a full chapter
(8), as also to two of the three definitive 'structures', the mithraeum (7) and the
tauroctony (9). (The third, non-ubiquitous structure, the grade hierarchy, I touch
on in Chapter 9.) Finally, in the 'Conclusions' we revisit the descriptive template
briefly but more systematically.

The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System:
I. Introduction and Comparisons

It is a cluster of sacred symbols, woven into some sort of ordered whole,
which makes up a religious system.

(Geertz 1973: 129)

1. RELIGION AS A SYSTEM OF SYMBOLS:
AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL APPROACH

In his justly celebrated essay, 'Religion as a cultural system', the anthropologist
Clifford Geertz (1973: ch. 4) defined 'a religion' as 'a system of symbols'. 1 As
indicated at the outset (Ch. 1, sect. 1), I shall apply Geertz's definition and the
interpretations which stem from it to the Mithraic mysteries. 2

Fortunately there is no need — yet — to worry about the further definitional
question: what is a symbol? What Geertz meant and what I mean by a symbol
will be obvious enough as we examine particular instances. Geertz spent little
time on definition and none on lists or examples of symbols in isolation. Symbols
manifest themselves in particular contexts and these contexts are specific to
particular cultures. For Geertz, the exemplary context is not the icon or the
sacred space so much as the performance or ritual in which 'symbolic forms' are
constructed, apprehended, utilized (1973: 91).

Geertz's approach can only be captured by quotation in extenso. This is because
the symbol or complex of symbols is inseparable from, and incomprehensible

1 The full definition reads: 'a religion is (1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish
powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions
of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that
(5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic' (1973: 90). Geettz's approach of 'interpret-
ation' (as opposed to 'explanation') and 'thick description', it must be admitted, is now somewhat out
of favour. Nevertheless, the essay is a classic, and 'out of favout' is not the same as 'out of date'.

2 Thete are naturally other eminent symbolist anthropologists whom we could profitably have
followed, notably Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, and Edmund Leach. On the symbolists see Bell
1997: 61-92.

68 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

apart from, the activity which it informs; and the activity, so informed, is an
expression of the culture — its world view and its ethos 3 — which the symbol
system constructs and holds in place. 'They [the concrete symbols involved]
both express the world's climate and shape it' (1973: 95).

Let us take as our example Geertz's description of the Navaho 'sing' and the
symbol of the 'sand painting' which is an integral component of this rite (1973:
104-5):

A sing — the Navaho have about sixty different ones for different purposes, but virtually all
of them are dedicated to removing some sort of physical or mental illness — is a kind of
religious psychodrama in which there are three main actors: the 'singer' or curer, the
patient, and, as a kind of antiphonal chorus, the patient's family and friends. The
structure of all the sings, the drama's plot, is quite similar. There are three main acts:
a purification of the patient and audience; a statement, by means of repetitive chants and
ritual manipulations, of the wish to restore well-being ('harmony') in the patient; an
identification of the patient with the Holy People and his consequent 'cure'. The
purification rites involve forced sweating, induced vomiting, and so on, to expel the
sickness from the patient physically. The chants, which are numberless, consist mainly of
simple optative phrases ('may the patient be well', 'I am getting better all over', etc.). And,
finally, the identification of the patient with the Holy People, and thus with cosmic order
generally, is accomplished through the agency of a sand painting depicting the Holy
People in one or another appropriate mythic setting. The singer places the patient on the
painting, touching the feet, hands, knees, shoulders, breast, back, and head of the divine
figures and then the corresponding parts of the patient, performing thus what is essen-
tially a bodily identification of the human and divine. This is the climax of the sing: the
whole curing process may be likened, Reichard says, 4 to a spiritual osmosis in which the
illness in man and the power of the deity penetrate the ceremonial membrane in both
directions, the former being neutralized by the latter. Sickness seeps out in the sweat,
vomit, and other purification rites; health seeps in as the Navaho patient touches, through
the medium of the singer, the sacred sand painting.

Note that Geertz is content to leave the specific form and content of the sand
painting quite imprecise. Of course at that early stage in the essay detailed
analysis would be inappropriate. Later, Geertz does indeed go into considerable
detail, especially when discussing the 'cultural performances' of Bali (1973:
114-18) and of Java (ibid. 132-40, 'the shadow-puppet play or wajang). But
his aim is always to capture through sympathetic yet meticulous description the
symbolic intent of the whole, not the individual meanings of its constituent
elements. In so far as he ever states what it is that symbols symbolize (what they
are signs of), he specifies only very broad categories: 'They ["the Cross", etc.] are
all symbols, or at least symbolic elements, because they are tangible formulations

3 See the next essay in Geertz's collection (ch. 5: 'Ethos, world view, and the analysis of sacred
symbols').

4 G. Reichard, Navaho Religion, 2 vols. (New York, 1950), no page number(s) cited.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 69

of notions, abstractions from experience fixed in perceptible forms, concrete
embodiments of ideas, attitudes, judgements, longings, or beliefs' (ibid. 91).

The intent of a complex of symbols, especially when energized in a performa-
tive context (of which the religious ritual is the archetype), is to construct, to
express, and to legitimate the ethos and the world view of the culture concerned.

. . . sacred symbols function to synthesize a people's ethos — the tone, character, and
quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood — and their world view — the
picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas
of order. In religious belief and practice a group's ethos is rendered intellectually reason-
able by being shown to represent a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of afiairs
the world view describes, while the world view is rendered emotionally convincing by
being presented as an image of the actual state of afiairs peculiarly well arranged to
accommodate such a way of life. (Ibid. 89-90)

Whatever else religion may be, it is in part an attempt ... to conserve the fund of general
meanings in terms of which each individual interprets his experience and organizes his
conduct.

But meanings can only be 'stored' in symbols: a cross, a crescent, or a feathered serpent.
Such religious symbols, dramatized in rituals or related in myths, are felt somehow to sum
up, for those for whom they are resonant, what is known about the way the world is, the
quality of the emotional life it supports, and the way one ought to behave while in it.
(Ibid. 127)

A symbol system, in Geertz's well-known formulation (ibid. 93—4) is thus both
a 'model of the world and a 'modeler' living in it. Observation of Navaho ritual
and description of the symbol system in action find accordingly 'an ethic prizing
calm deliberateness, untiring persistence, and dignified caution complement[ing]
an image of nature as tremendously powerful, mechanically regular, and highly
dangerous' (ibid. 130).

2. ARE GEERTZIAN DESCRIPTION AND

INTERPRETATION APPLICABLE TO THE SYMBOL SYSTEM

OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES?

Initially, it might seem that Geertz's method of carefully describing cultural
symbol systems in action cannot be applied to Mithraism because the cult's
performances are inaccessible to us. Field work, cultural anthropology's prime
method, is of course impossible, and the archaeological record of the Mithraic
mysteries is neither sufficient nor of the sort amenable to 'thick description'. 5

In answer, it is worth observing first that Geertz himself uses the written record
of the past as effectively as field work, his own or others', in the present.

5 On 'thick description' see ch. 1 of Geertz's Interpretation of Cultures (1973).

70 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

For example, in chapter 6 of Local Knowledge (1983) he brilliantly captures, from
factual descriptions and imaginative literature, the ethos and world views sym-
bolically instantiated in the Royal Progresses of 'Elizabeth's England' (sixteenth
century), 'Hayam Wuruk's Java' (fourteenth century), and 'Hasan's Morocco'
(late nineteenth century). The past, in itself, raises no insuperable barrier.

Certainly, then, it is possible to take a Geertzian approach to rituals and other
formalized activities in antiquity which are well documented in extant literature,
such as the Roman triumph and the games. On the latter, K. M. Coleman's
landmark article, 'Fatal charades: Roman executions staged as mythological
enactments' (1990), can legitimately be read as a Geertzian 'thick description'
which elicits through the interpretation of energized symbol complexes the
mutually reinforcing ethos and world view of imperial Rome.

But how is 'thick description' possible for Mithraism when it is precisely the
extant literary record which is so sparse? Would not a symbolist interpretation of
the tauroctony be as fruitless as, say, an interpretation of a Navaho sand painting
without record or observation of the 'sing' which activates its intent and meaning?

3. YES, GEERTZIAN DESCRIPTION AND

INTERPRETATION ARE POSSIBLE, PROVIDED WE BEGIN

NOTWITH THE TAUROCTONY BUT WITH THE

MITHRAEUM AND THE GRADE STRUCTURE

If we focus on the tauroctony as, superficially at least, Mithraism's most obvious
symbol complex, then a Geertzian interpretation would indeed be a hopeless
endeavour. That is because, despite its manifest richness and evocativeness as a
complex of symbols, it has (for us) no immediate ritual context. Perhaps when
the mysteries were a living religion it did have such a context, perhaps not. It does
of course have an indirect link to ritual in that the bull-killing was the necessary
precursor of the feast of Mithras and Sol, and the feast of Mithras and Sol was the
divine archetype of the sacramental feast of the initiates in the mithraeum. 6 It
may well be that this was sufficient. But the fact remains that the tauroctony,
although amenable to symbolic interpretation, cannot now be interpreted — if it
ever could have been — as a complex of energized symbols or symbols-in-action
analogous to the Navaho sand painting. For all its centrality in the mysteries, the
tauroctony is an accessory to ritual action, not an instrument of action.

The tauroctony is one of the three distinctive symbolic constructs of the
Mysteries of Mithras. The other two are the mithraeum and the hierarchy of
the seven grades. This important fact I incorporated into my descriptive template
of the mysteries (Ch. 1, sect. 3) as follows:

6 This holds whether or not the serious eating and drinking was done outside, as at the recently
discoveted Tienen mithtaeum (Mattens and De Boe 2004).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 71

Dl. The complexes of symbols conveying the axioms and motifs of the mysteries in their

various domains are manifested concretely. . .
D2. The initiate apprehends the symbol complexes conveying the axioms and motifs of

the mysteries in their various domains . . .
on structured sites; in the mysteries there are three principal and distinctive structures:

1. the physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony (with its reverse = the banquet
scene, plus peripheral scenes)

2. the physical structure of the mithraeum

3. the organizational structure of the seven grades.

Unlike the tauroctony, the mithraeum and the grade hierarchy are structures
which can be entered, though of course in very different senses. One can 'get into'
them — literally: 'into' the mithraeum because it is a room, a three-dimensional
space designed to be entered physically; 'into' the grade hierarchy because it is a
career, extended in the dimension of time and designed to be entered by initiation
at a particular moment. In contrast, the tauroctony is an impenetrable three- or
two-dimensional object, a mass or a surface to be apprehended from the outside
only. No one, except in the imagination, ever entered the tauroctony to relate to
its symbols from within. In a phenomenological sense one 'intends' the symbolic
structures of mithraeum and grade hierarchy from inside, of the tauroctony from
outside.

Because they could be entered and in a manner of speaking lived, the symbolic
structures of mithraeum and grade hierarchy are in principle amenable to
Geertzian description and interpretation. And if properly described and inter-
preted they can tell us much about both the ethos and the world view of
Mithraism.

There is of course a necessary condition for an adequate description, and that
is sufficient information. Do we know enough not just about the structure and
elements of the two symbol complexes but about their functions in performance,
about how the initiates actually engaged with them? To repeat, it is no use
knowing everything about the iconography of the 'sand painting' if you know
nothing about the 'sing'; better a modicum of information about both.

4. A CULTURE WITHIN A CULTURE: MITHRAISM AS A

SUBSYSTEM WITHIN THE CULTURAL SYSTEM OF

GRAECO-ROMAN PAGANISM. THE HERMENEUTIC

IMPLICATIONS

Mithraism was not an autonomous and autarkic culture. Few cultures are,
although the 'p re-contact', 'primitive', 'tribal' culture used to be anthropology's
ideal case precisely because it is uncontaminated by the alien. But Mithraism was

72 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

comfortably embedded in the society of the Roman empire. If there is one trait
which scholars unanimously ascribe to the Mithraists, it is social conformism.
Whatever their esoteric values, we may be sure that the initiates shared and
echoed the values of the surrounding culture and subscribed, reflectively or
unreflectively, to its world view.

Consequently, in our descriptions and interpretations we may properly deploy
much information about the symbolism and symbol complexes current in
Graeco-Roman culture, not just in Mithraism where the available data on the
significance of symbols (as opposed to just the symbols themselves) are so
limited. In point of fact, drawing selectively on the ethos and world view of
the wider culture is what Mithraic scholarship has been doing hermeneutically
for the past century. This was the topic I addressed specifically in Chapter 3 as
the problem of 'referents', although in that context I addressed it from the
traditional standpoint of the iconography of the monuments. Scholarship, we
saw, has found three fields of reference: first (Ch. 3, sect. 2), the lore and
learning (the 'encyclopaedia') of the surrounding Graeco-Roman culture; sec-
ondly (sect. 3), Iranian religion, with the proviso that we can never be entirely
sure what in the assimilated religion was or had been 'real existing' Mazdaism and
what mere Perserie constructed (in all sincerity) by the founders of the Mysteries
or by others in the late Hellenistic world; thirdly (sect. 4), astronomy and
astrology, or more precisely the heavens as systematically constructed in
Graeco-Roman culture.

5. THE SYMBOL COMPLEX OF THE GRADE HIERARCHY

Of the mysteries' three major complexes of symbols, the 'structures' (D) in our
description, two are ubiquitous: the mithraeum and the tauroctony. The dis-
tinctive space and the distinctive icon, it appears, were functional necessities.
One cannot conceive of the Mysteries of Mithras without them. The third
symbol complex, the grade structure, appears to have been optional. Few
would now argue that the hierarchy was established in all Mithraic communities,
whether or not it is attested in the archaeological record. Currently, a minimalist
position is in vogue. Manfred Clauss (most recently, 2000: 131-3) claims that
only those whose rank in the hierarchy is explicitly attested were grade-holders in
the Mysteries, a group amounting to about 1 5 per cent of the thousand or so
known initiates. Likewise, Robert Turcan (1999) asserts that the well-known
correlation of the seven grades with the seven planets was restricted to the area
(Rome and Ostia) and the time span (end of the second century to second half of
the third) of actual archaeological record.

I do not think that the minimalists are right; but even if they are, it is beside
the point. The important question from our perspective is whether the symbol

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 73

complex of the grade structure as attested may legitimately be read as an
expression of the ethos and world view of the initiates. No one, as far as
I know, has ever suggested otherwise. Indeed it is manifestly absurd to imagine
that the grade structure reflects an ethos and world view contrary to those in
communities where the hierarchy happens not to be attested in the archaeological
record.

In 1980 Richard Gordon published a comprehensive study of the grade
structure entitled 'Reality, evocation and boundary in the Mysteries of Mithras'.
In effect, as in intent, this study interpreted the symbolism of the grades, both
individually and together as a structured whole, in relation to the Graeco-Roman
'encyclopaedia', that immense fund of facts and factoids, lore and learning,
scattered across the literature of classical antiquity but lodged particularly in
certain works of the second and third tier such as Pliny the Elder's Natural History
and Aelian's Nature of Animals (Gordon 1980^: n. 8). The 'encyclopaedia' is the
key — at least a key and arguably the best key — to the culture's basic ethos and
world view. I intend 'basic' in a non-trivial sense, for the 'encyclopaedia' instan-
tiates, albeit in an uncodified, unsystematic, and discontinuous form, the cul-
ture's fundamental attitudes and beliefs: that which 'everyone knows' about the
world, about how to behave in it, and about what to expect of the behaviour of
others, whether kin or friend or foe.

By exploring the symbolism of the grades with reference to the 'encyclopaedia'
Gordon was able to see what aspects of the ethos and world view of Graeco-
Roman society the Mithraists had selected, for the most part unconsciously, and
amplified. For example, the 'encyclopaedia's' facts and factoids about real-life
ravens and lions enabled him to clarify what it meant to be make-believe
Mithraic Ravens and Lions (in ascending order initiates of the first and fourth
grades respectively) . Consequently we can now better interpret and set in context
data such as (1) Porphyry's testimony (De antro 15) that Mithraic Lions wash
their hands with honey as a fiery liquid inimical to water, and (2) the Sta Prisca
painted text that the Lions are incense-burners 'through whom we offer incense,
through whom we ourselves are consumed' (V485).

Much of the small extant stock of Mithraism's symbols-in- action relates to the
grades, as demonstrated by the two examples above, honey and incense. Because
they are symbols realized in performance — in doing, not knowing — they reveal
in particular the ethos of the mysteries, 'how we as Lions behave, what values we
stand for'. Consequently, it is through the symbolism of the grade structure that
we can recapture and describe with a modicum of depth something of the fourth
'mode' of experiencing Mithraism (E4 in our descriptive template), 'ethical
behaviour consonant with the mysteries'.

There is no need here to continue with how Mithraic Lions exemplify through
their performative symbols the virtues of austerity, dryness, and purity, or how
and why 'dryness' is an esoteric virtue in the Mithraic mysteries. For that I can do
no better than to recommend Gordon's article to the reader. Like Geertzian 'thick

74 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

description', such presentations are best read unabridged. 7 Their impact is in the
richness of their detail, and summary only drains them of their power to
represent the evocations of the original. Besides, my intent in this book is not
to present new findings or new hypotheses about the grades or any other
component of the Mithraic Mysteries, but by devising proper hermeneutic
methods to render a more adequate account of what scholarship has long
known by intuition and ad hoc empiricism.

6. A MODERN COMPARATOR: THE SYMBOL SYSTEM OF

THE CHAMULAS

The two examples of symbols-in-action cited above, the honey ablutions of
Mithraic Lions and their incense-burning, prompts a comparison with the
symbol system of another culture in which comparable symbols both evoke
and express comparable values in ethos and world view.

The culture is that of the Chamulas, a people of southern Mexico (central
Chiapas highlands), described by Gary Gossen. The religion of the Chamulas is a
blend of Christianity and Mayan sun cult, and their culture and thought are
structured on a grid of 'discriminations' in which the Sun is 'the first principle of
order' (Gossen 1979: 118). Hence, of course, the relevance of the Chamula
symbol system to the Mithraic: both are fundamentally solar. Both are also
syncretic. Just as Chamula religion blends Christianity and Mayan sun cult, so
Mithraism in its day blended Persian — or what it believed to be Persian —
religion with Graeco-Roman paganism, most obviously in its pantheon.

Chamula culture is different from Mithraic culture in two major respects: it is
a self-contained regional and ethnic culture, and it is a contemporary, living
culture. Interestingly, while Chamula religion drew on the alien system of
Christianity (via Dominican missionaries), their own developed system as a
whole has long enabled the Chamulas to insulate themselves mentally and
physically from the surrounding Christian and Ladino culture. The Mithraic
mysteries, in contrast, were supremely integrative; or at least from the member-
ship profile in the epigraphic record we can safely say that they attracted those
well integrated into the society of the Roman empire. But these dissimilarities
between Mithraic and Chamula cultures, far from invalidating comparisons,
enhance their value.

To understand the structure of their 'symbolic discrimination' (Gossen 1979:
121), one must recognize that 'Chamula cosmological symbolism has as its

7 'Geertzian' would be an appropriate label for Gordon's description and analysis of the Mithraic
grades. Geertz was a major influence on Gordon's work at that time (see Gordon 1979: 17, n. 53),
although, as the term 'evocation' in the title indicates, Gordon was most influenced by Dan Sperber,
who was then challenging the symbolists' assumption that symbols have meanings (see Sperber
1975).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 75

primary orientation the point of view of the Sun as he emerges on the eastern
horizon each day, facing his universe, north on his right hand, south on his left
hand' (ibid. 119). The risen Sun, in Chamula imagination, then travels round to
the north, thus proceeding counterclockwise and to his right, until he sets in the
west. His subterranean nocturnal journey back to the east is accordingly a
journey round to the south. It is also represented as a winter journey, just as
the northern sector of the journey is represented as a summer journey.

The logic of the solar stance and the solar journey structures the system of
Chamula oppositions ('symbolic discriminations' in Gossen's terms) — see table.

Superior ('senior') Inferior ('junior') 8

Sun Moon

on/to the right on/to the left

counterclockwise clockwise

east and north west and south

up/high down/low

hot/fiery cold/earthy

male female

The 'fundamental orientation' (i.e. Sun rising in the east, 'facing his universe,
north on his right hand, south on his left'), says Gossen,

may also contribute to an understanding of Chamula ritual treatment of space. It is first of
all necessary to understand that religious cargo-holders [office-holders] themselves have
an aspect of deity in that they share with the sun and the saints (the sun's kinsmen) the
responsibility and the burden of maintaining the social order. While imparting a sacred
aspect to themselves through exemplary behavior and constant use of sacred symbols and
objects such as strong rum liquor, incense, candles, fireworks and cigarettes, most of
which have actual or metaphoric qualities of heat, they metaphorically follow the sun's
pattern of motion by moving to their own right through any ritual space which lies before
them. (Gossen 1979: 119)

Before we turn to the 'ritual treatment of space', which will of course lead us to
a comparison with the mithraeum in the Mithraic mysteries, we should first take
a look at the 'sacred symbols and objects' of Chamula culture mentioned above
and compare them to the two 'symbols-in-action' of the Mithraic mysteries
already introduced, incense and honey. To the Mithraic pair in the following
table I add (in parentheses) another three to balance the Chamula pentad.

The first and most obvious point of comparison is that both sets of symbols/
objects are physically and/or 'metaphorically' hot. Secondly, certain of the sym-
bols/objects in each set are incandescent: they emit light as well as heat. Thirdly,

8 'Senior/junior' are Gossen's terms. A better/worse discrimination seems to be implicit, though
definitely not a Manichaean good/bad discrimination.

76 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

Chamula symbols/objects Mithraic symbols/objects

incense incense

rum honey

candles (plethora of lamps)

fireworks (light effects)

cigarettes (pyropon asthma — 'fiery breath')

and more importantly, both sets of symbols/objects serve to define, to validate,
and to sanctify the lives and actions of males in a hierarchy, the Chamula cargo-
holders 9 on the one hand and the Mithraic grade-holders on the other. Lastly,
and most importantly, in handling the symbols/objects of their respective systems
Chamula men and the all-male initiates of Mithras engage in a mimesis of the Sun.
It is worth noting that the 'ritual height' and hence the solarity of Chamula
cargo-holders

is expressed by special pole and branch towers, fifteen feet high, which are constructed at
their homes at the time when they leave office. A representative of the Alferez [religious
cargo-holder] sits in the tower and thus symbolizes the new heights of the desirable which
the outgoing official has achieved in his year in office. In so doing, he has helped the sun
to maintain order and thus partakes of the sun's good, rising aspect. (Gossen 1979: 121)

Comparable in the Mithraic system is the rank of Sun- Runner (Heliodromus),
the second highest in the grade hierarchy, whose tutelary planet is the Sun
himself. 10 He is the Sun's special representative in the cult economy, and at the
sacred meal he sits in for the Sun, just as the Father sits in for Mithras.
Furthermore, as I have argued in my interpretation of the second of the two
newly discovered rituals represented on the Mainz vessel (Beck 2000: 154-67),
the Sun-Runner has his own ritual procession in mimesis of his celestial patron. It
is a misrepresentation to suppose the Sun-Runner a mere courier who 'runs' the
Sun's errands (that function would belong to the most junior grade, the Raven,
under Mercury's protection). No, in mimesis he runs the Sun's own course; for
technically, in astronomical parlance, a dromos is an arc of the planet's own orbit.

Some line-by-line comparisons are now in order, although we should bear in
mind that these cannot be made except by reference to the intent of the two sets
of symbols/objects as integrated wholes in each culture. The first pair (incense)
appears in identical form in both lists and so needs no comment. The second pair
instantiates a paradox: rum and honey are liquids which are 'fiery', not watery
as intuitive physics (folk physics) would suggest. To match 'candles' on the

9 Chamula women cannot be cargo-holders. Significantly, the Chamula word for 'mother' is
prefixed to a husband's cargo title to designate his wife.

io w/ e can now a [ so appreciate why the tutelary planet of the Father, the highest grade of all, is
Saturn. In Greek astronomical parlance, Saturn is literally the 'highest' of the planets because it is the
furthest from earth and the nearest to the ultimate sphere of the fixed stars.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 77

Chamula side I have proposed for Mithraism a plethora of lamps' such as was
found massed around the altar in the Caesarea mithraeum (Blakely et al. 1987:
150). In a Chamula 'household curing ceremony' the candles are arranged by
'seniority' so that the 'largest, most expensive and longest-burning candles remain
closest to "conceptual East"' (Gossen 1979: 128, Fig. 6C). As analogues to
modern fireworks I suggest 'light effects', notably the piercing of monuments so
that the solar rays or the lunar crescent could be illuminated from behind (e.g.
V847; Schwertheim 1974: 35, no. 36). Finally, as an analogue to cigarettes, a text
from the Dura mithraeum evokes a comparable mixture of fire and air, the 'fiery
breath which for the magi too is the lustration (niptron) of holy men' (V68). 11

7. THE CONSTRUCTION OF SPACE IN MITHRAIC AND
CHAMULA CULTURES

To understand a culture's 'ritual treatment of space' one must first understand
how that culture constructs and represents space itself, from the level of its
cosmos down to its actual environment. 12

For the Mithraists this is easy and straightforward. Mithraic space and the
Mithraic cosmos merely replicate the standard Graeco-Roman conceptions of
space and the cosmos. There is nothing at all esoteric about it. It is the same
public text — 'in bold' as one might say, since the Mysteries, as the plethora of
cosmic symbols attests, placed a greater emphasis on the celestial cosmos (to
periechon, that which 'surrounds' the earth) than did the culture at large.

In the Hellenized culture of the Roman empire the universe was represented as
a nest of rotating spheres centred on a spherical but immobile earth. There are
eight of these spheres, seven inner and one outer. The outer sphere carries the
'fixed' stars rotating westwards (from left to right for a south-facing, northern-
hemisphere observer) in the period of a twenty-four-hour day. The inner seven,
while also participating in 'universal' motion, rotate in the opposite direction
(eastwards, right to left), each in a different period. The function of these spheres
is to carry the seven planets, that is, the Sun, the Moon, and the five planets
visible to the naked eye, in their individual orbits. The Moon's sphere rotates in
the period of a month, 13 the Sun's in the period of a year, and the other five in the
periods appropriate to each. On the common-sense assumption that the slower
the planet, the farther away it must be, the ancients ordered the seven planetary
spheres as shown in the table (from the earth outwards to the sphere of the

11 See Gordon 1980^: 36-7. Note that this blend of fire and air is a medium for ablution too. So
it is even more paradoxical than honey, which is at least a liquid.

12 For this and subsequent sections J. Z. Smith's To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (1987) is
essential reading.

13 A sidereal month (27.32 days), not the longer synodic month of 'new moon' to 'new moon'
(29.53 days).

78 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

Planet Period of rotation of sphere

Moon one month

Mercury one year

Venus one year

Sun one year

Mars two years

Jupiter twelve years

Saturn thirty years 14

fixed stars). Since the 'inferior' planets Mercury and Venus have the same average
geocentric sidereal period as the Sun, this trio could be and was in fact arranged
in different orders. That shown in the table was eventually preferred, largely
because it places the Sun in the centre of the sequence to orchestrate and to
illuminate the dance of the celestial bodies.

Not only do the spheres of the planets turn in the opposite direction to the
sphere of the fixed stars, but they also rotate around different poles. Consequently
their equators are oblique to the equator of the sphere of the fixed stars. The
equator of the latter we call the celestial equator; 15 the common equator of the
former, which is actually the Sun's orbit, we call the ecliptic. 16 The ecliptic is
oblique to the celestial equator by approximately 23 1 /4°.

The points at which the ecliptic intersects the equator are the spring and
autumn equinoxes. At the spring equinox the Sun crosses the equator from south
to north; at the autumn equinox from north to south. Midway between the
spring equinox and the autumn equinox is the summer solstice. This is the
northernmost point on the ecliptic, the point at which the Sun changes direction
(hence the term 'tropic') 17 and starts to move back southwards. Opposite the
summer solstice is the winter solstice, the southernmost point on the ecliptic,
from which the Sun starts to move back northwards again. As should be clear
from this explanation, the equinoxes and the solstices are equally points in
celestial space and moments in annual time.

The ecliptic is defined not only by these four tropic points but also by the
twelve 'signs' {zoidid) into which it is divided. Strictly speaking, the zodiac is a
band encircling the heavens, 12° in width, of which the ecliptic is the median

14 Figures rounded off to the nearest year for the three 'superior' planets.

15 The celestial equator is a projection of our terrestrial equator outwards onto the sphere of the
fixed stars. In speaking of 'the equator' unqualified, we moderns usually intend the terrestrial
equator; the ancients intended the celestial equator.

16 Rather than dealing with seven different planetary equators, astronomers ancient and modern
use the ecliptic as the common planetary equator and treat the actual orbits of the Moon and the
other five planets as deviations from it. Consequently, the lunar and planetary orbits are to the
ecliptic as the ecliptic is to the equator.

17 In ancient parlance the equinoxes can also be called 'tropics'.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 79

line. Each sign is 30° in length (12 x 30° = 360°) and the sequence custom-
arily begins with Aries at the spring equinox. The signs are named after the actual
constellations with which in antiquity they roughly coincided. 18

All this is elementary stuff The model (excluding the divisions of the zodiac) is
essentially that established by Plato in the Timaeus. 19 His authorship does not
imply that it is astronomically 'learned'; it is not: the work's sophistication lies
entirely in its metaphysics. The very simplicity of its physical cosmology, backed
by Plato's almost divine authority, guaranteed its persistence as antiquity's default
model long after the advances of Hellenistic mathematical astronomy had made
it scientifically obsolete. It even has its standard iconographic representation: the
world globe with the crossed bands of equator and ecliptic/zodiac. 20

Two features of the cosmology of the Timaeus should be noted here. First, as
we saw with respect to the celestial tropics, the heavens are where Time and Space
are related. The celestial bodies are created specifically to instantiate Time in the
cosmos: as a result of this plan and purpose of god for the birth of time, the sun
and moon and the five planets . . . came into being to define and preserve the
measures of time' {Timaeus 38c2-6, trans. Lee).

Secondly, the macrocosm is linked to the microcosm of the rational human
soul as original to copy in a very literal way. The human soul is rational because
and only because it replicates the two celestial orbits described above, the
revolutions of the Same (universal motion) and of the Different (planetary
motion), and maintains them undistorted (41-7). Speaking of the human eye,
Plato says (47b5-c4, trans. Lee):

Let us rather say that the cause and purpose of god's invention and gift to us of sight was that
we should see the revolutions of intelligence in the heavens and use their untroubled course
to guide the troubled revolutions in our own understanding, which are akin to them, and so,
by learning what they are and how to calculate them accurately according to their nature,
correct the disorder of own revolutions by the standard of the invariability of those of god.

Ideal Space is thus internalized. The rational human soul contains, in Geertzian
terms, both a model of and model for the universe. 21

This is not just an ontological matter (what sort of thing is the soul and where
does it fit in the general scheme of things?). More important in the present
context are its spatial implications. The Timaeus (with the Phaedrus) stands at the
head of a long and rich tradition of soul journeys, frequently on the pattern of a
descent from the sphere of the fixed stars down into mortal genesis on earth and

18 As a result of the phenomenon known as 'the precession of the equinoxes', the signs of the
zodiac and their eponymous constellations have long since parted company.

19 Astronomically, the signs of the zodiac were adopted in order to measure longitude (i.e.
distance along the ecliptic from the vernal equinox). Their primary intent is of course astrological.

20 To take a Mithraic example, in V543 the lion-headed god is posed on just such a globe.

21 It would be truer to the language of the Timaeus to say that the rational human soul physically
instantiates the revolutions of heaven within the human head, which was made spherical for
precisely that purpose.

80 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

an ascent back up again at death. Later we shall look at the Mithraic version of
this travelogue which boldly enacted the celestial journey in ritual. The point
here is that in this widely held model constructed extraterrestrial space is not
untrodden space. People go there.

And what of terrestrial space? In the Mysteries this was of little concern in and
of itself, although as the arena for the processes of birth and death, growth and
decay, seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, moisture and aridity, Earth clearly
mattered. 22 Presumably the Mithraists' geographic sense was much the same as
that of other denizens of the Roman empire, though perhaps sharper and more
informed among those with military or bureaucratic experience. Mithraists of
that sort might well have a greater sense of the extent of the empire and thus of
the oikoumene. What would be peculiar to the imaginative initiate would be the
awareness that his mysteries came from 'elsewhere', specifically from 'the moun-
tains near Persia' where 'Zoroaster first hallowed a natural cave in Mithras'
honour' (Porphyry, De antro 6).

The celestial and terrestrial reach of the Mithraists' construction of space
stands in sharp contrast to the very bounded construction of the Chamulas.
Laterally the Chamula world ends or fades into the unknown and irrelevant not
far from their own highland region. The lowlands to their south (reached from
the western end of their territory) have significance because they are the source of
'hot' ritual products and ingredients: 'tobacco, rum, incense, candles, and fire-
works' (Gossen 1979: 123):

Resin for incense, beef tallow and wax for candles, the ingredients for gunpowder,
sugarcane for rum, and tobacco for cigarettes do in fact come from, or at least through,
the lowlands. This tropical origin is interesting because it illustrates a paradox in Chamula
thinking about the world. Although the highlands are closer than the lowlands to the sun
in a vertical sense, the climate of the highlands is actually much colder than that of the
lowlands. It may be that the ambiguous quality of the lowlands (physically hot yet socially
distant) makes them a logical source for some sacred symbols and substances.

We shall meet paradoxes of this sort in Mithraic cosmology too. They are what
distinguish sacred geography from mere economic geography.

To the north and east there is no dramatic change of terrain. Moreover, the
Chamulas have no economic incentive to travel there, as they do to the lowlands
to the south via the west. However, on the principle that 'higher is better' because
closer to the Sun, the north and the east are viewed positively. This is especially so
of the east, the direction of sunrise. 'Significantly, Tzontevitz Mountain, the
highest in the Central Chiapas Highlands and the most sacred of all mountains,

22 Leroy Campbell's (1968) valiant attempt to correlate different patterns of composition and
iconography with different geographical climates is now more or less forgotten. The general sig-
nificance for the Mithraists of Earth as the source of fertility is made clear by Line 1 at Sta Prisca:
Fecunda Tellus cuncta qua generat Pales (Vermaseren 1960: 144; 1963: 187—92; Betz 1968: 64—6).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 81

lies both to the east of Chamula ceremonial center and within Barrio San Juan,
which is the highest ranking of the three barrios' (ibid. 118).

Obviously the same principle 'higher is better' informs the vertical construction
of the Chamula world. Underground in caves dwell the 'earthlords' who 'provide
all forms of precipitation, including accompanying clouds, lightning, and thun-
der', snakes 'which are the familiars and alternate forms of the earthlords', and
'demons': 'all are associated with dampness, darkness, and lowness' (ibid. 118)

As well as this underground world there is an antipodal world where dwell the
dead:

The dead eat charred food and flies in place of normal food. The dead must also refrain
from sexual intercourse. With these exceptions, life in the underworld is much like life on
earth. People do not suffer there. Those who have murdered or committed suicide are
exceptions. These are burned by the sun as he travels his circuit there during the night on
earth. (Ibid. 118)

Interestingly, the extreme of lowness seems to be correlated not with an extreme
of cold but with a malefic extreme of heat: charred food, sunburnt sinners.
The Chamula heavens are described by Gossen (ibid. 118) as follows:

Three layers, which informants draw as concentric domes, make up the sky. The first and
smallest of these domes is the only level of the sky which is visible to most human beings.
This level, however, is only a reflection of what is happening at the upper two levels. The
moon (who is conceptually equivalent to the Virgin Mary, hm'letik or 'Our Mother') and
minor constellations travel in the second level. The sun (who is conceptually equivalent to
Christ, htotik or 'Our Father'), Saint Jerome, the guardian of animal souls, and major
(bright) constellations reside and travel in the third level. The heat and brilliance of the
sun's head are so great that they penetrate the two inferior levels of the sky. Thus, it is only
the reflection of the sun's face and head which we perceive on earth.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of this cosmology is the doubling of the Sun.
The visible Sun of our everyday experience is but a pale image of the real Sun,
exalted and dazzling, two spheres above. Whatever the reason for this strikingly
Platonic conception, there is a salutary lesson to be learnt. As emphasized
throughout this study, one should never underestimate the capacity of 'simple
folk' to create and sustain sophisticated systems of representation.

8. MITHRAISM'S SECOND AXIOM: 'HARMONY OF
TENSION IN OPPOSITION'"

To the extent that Mithraic cosmology is more sophisticated than Chamula
cosmology it is because it is derived from the learned, philosophical model of
its Graeco-Roman cultural matrix. We can see this in the distinction between the

23 Despite its different time frame G. E. R. Lloyd's Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumen-
tation in Early Greek Thought (1966) is germane to our inquiry in a fundamental way.

82 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

two cosmic motions, universal daily motion and planetary motion, described
above. The Mithraic mysteries, as we shall see, incorporated this fundamental
opposition; Chamula cosmology does not. In particular, Chamula cosmology
conflates the two solar journeys, the daily and the annual/seasonal. This makes
intuitive sense but is scientifically less fruitful. It is also less generative of paradox
and opposition of the sort that the Mithraists eagerly exploited.

These considerations bring us to Mithraism's second 'axiom' or 'ultimate
sacred postulate', as I termed the mysteries' two fundamental principles in our
descriptive template in Chapter 1:

Al . The mysteries give symbolic expression to . . .

A2. In the mysteries, the initiate apprehends symbolically . . .

two axioms or ultimate sacred postulates:

1. DEUS SOL INVICTUS MITHRAS

2. 'Harmony of tension in opposition.'

Binary opposition is not only inevitable in a solar religion, it is also inevitably
explicit. This point is of fundamental importance. Mere binary opposition or
polarity can be said to characterize the world view and ethos of virtually any
religion, indeed of virtually any culture. It is not a contingent property of such
systems. Rather, it is an ineluctable consequence of the way we as a species
organize our cognized world, of the way we think. Our postulated second axiom
must therefore do more than reinvent the wheel of Levi-Straussian structuralism.

Hermeneutically, I intend with the second axiom the claim that in contrast to
the deeply buried, intuitively unobvious oppositions of most structuralist analy-
sis, 24 the oppositions in the Mithraic system are on the surface, explicit, and as
readily accessible to the membership then as to scholars now. This accessibility is
a function of the solar focus of the cult. It needs/needed no Levi-Strauss to tell a
modern scholar or a Mithraist or a Chamula that day (Sun present) is opposed to
night (Sun absent) and that summer (Sun highest) is opposed to winter (Sun
lowest). Binary pairs and polarities come with the turf.

The second axiom is expressed in the form of a quotation from Porphyry's De
antro nympharum (29), where it concludes and encapsulates a list of binary
oppositions:

Since nature arose out of diversity,

the ancients everywhere made that which has a twofold entrance her symbol.

For the progression is either through the sensible or the intelligible;

and when it is through the sensible,

it is either through the sphere of the fixed stars or through the sphere of the planets;

and again it is made either by an immortal or a mortal road.

24 To take an example from classical antiquity, see Levi-Strauss's own well-known analysis of the
Theban myth (1955).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 83

There is a cardinal point above the earth and another below it,

one to the east and one to the west.

There are regions to the left and right,

there is night and day.

And so there is a tension of harmony in opposition,

and it shoots from the bowstring through opposites. 25

The saying itself, displayed here as the final two lines, is an adaptation of a
fragment of Heraclitus (51 DK). Elsewhere (Beck 2000: 167—71) I have argued
that it was the Mithraists who adapted it. The commonplace image of Mithras as
a bowman is thus the visual counterpart of the verbal symbolon which expresses
the mysteries' second axiom. The recovery of an actual Mithraic ritual (depicted
on a cult vessel from Mainz) in which the Father mimes Mithras-as-archer by
drawing a bow at an initiand has dramatically confirmed my interpretation of the
adapted Heraclitus fragment in De antro 29 (Beck 2000: 149-54, 167-71). 26

The original Mithraic symbolon has been disguised by its redeployment in De
antro 29. There is however another extant symbolon of the Mithraic mysteries
which is explicitly identified as such. In Contra Celsum 6.22 the Christian
apologist Origen states:

These things [i.e. the celestial ascent of souls] the logos of the Persians and the telete of
Mithras intimate. . . . for there is therein a certain symbolon of the two celestial revolutions
(periodon), that of the fixed stars and that assigned to the planets, and of the route of the
soul through and out (diexodou) of them. Such is the symbolon: a seven-gated ladder and
an eighth [sc. gate] on top (klimax heptapylos, epi de autei ogdoe) .

This hugely important testimony tells us (1) that the Mithraic symbolon was a
material object (i.e. a ladder of a certain construction) rather than a verbal
formula; (2) that it signified the two celestial revolutions, universal and planetary,
discussed in the preceding section of this chapter; (3) that it also signified the
journey of souls 'through and out'.

The symbol's first significance, the two celestial revolutions, returns us to the
primary cosmological opposition of Plato's Timaeus, the opposition between
universal motion which instantiates Sameness and Uniformity and planetary
motion which instantiates Difference and Multiplicity. It thus locates the mys-
teries' second axiom and thereby the mysteries themselves firmly within the
Platonic tradition.

The second significance, the 'through-and-out journey' of souls, does not — it
is essential to note — elevate the symbol's intent to a metaphysically higher plane.
To assume so would be a modern misapprehension triggered by the reference to
'souls' {psychon). The route of souls lies through the actual heavens which we can

25 Trans. Arethusa edn., modified to restore 'mortal' and 'immortal' to their correct order.

26 In discussing the adaptation of the Heraclitus fragment, I argued that the original Mithraic
subject of the second clause (kai toxeuei dia ton enantion) was Mithras himself: 'he shoots through
opposites.'

84 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

descry in the here and now with our mortal eyes. It is not just a metaphor for a
'spiritual journey' in the modern sense.

However, the 'route through and out' is not merely an itinerary through
extraterrestrial space, although it is fully that too. It is also a 'way out' in the
sense of an escape, a release from mortality back into immortality a return
whence we came, a recovery of our ontologically superior selves. These larger
claims are not of course literally intended by the symbolon in and of itself. Rather,
they are the Platonic entailments of the symbolon in the context of the mysteries.
In this sense it is not improper to say that the symbol of the ladder becomes a
symbol of salvation, as a Mithraist — and a Platonist — would understand the

term. 27

From the way 'through and out' of Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22, we return to
the 'downward path of souls and their route back out again' {ten eis kato kathodon
ton psychon kai palin exodon) of Porphyry, De antro 6, the passage we selected as
our 'gateway text' to the Mithraic mysteries (Ch. 2, sect. 1; Ch. 4, sects. 1-3).
Note that the soul journey is here explicitly dichotomized, whereas in the former
passage it was left implicit: presumably, there is a 'way in' to balance the 'way
through and out'. Note also that Porphyry does not here link the entry/descent
and the exit/ascent of souls to the two celestial motions. That occurs later, in ch.
29, where the two celestial motions are added to the list of binary pairs. Finally
note the important correlations:

downward = way in
upward = way out

Now in the context both of the mysteries and of our two literary sources, the way
down and in is the way of genesis into mortality and the way up and out is the
way of apogenesis into immortality. Accordingly, we may formulate the correl-
ations:

descent from heaven to earth = genesis into mortality
ascent from earth to heaven = apogenesis into immortality

or as oppositions:

descent from heaven to earth vs. ascent from earth to heaven

genesis into mortality vs. apogenesis into immortality

In Contra Celsum 6.22 the route of souls passes through both 'revolutions',
that is, through the planetary spheres and the sphere of the fixed stars, and the
same double route is implied in De antro 29, though as alternatives ('either
through ... or through). Elsewhere in De antro (chs. 21—4) we discover that the
entrance and exit lie at opposite points on the sphere of the fixed stars, namely the
summer solstice and the winter solstice respectively. It would be a mistake,

27 For more on Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22, see Beck 1988: 73—85.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 85

however, to try to integrate the data into a single coherent set. That way 'doctrine'
lies, the chimaera we exorcised in the preceding chapter. Better to leave the data
unreconciled as equally valid cosmological, anthropological, and soteriological
riffs on the grand theme of 'harmony of tension in opposition'.

APPENDIX: ON PORPHYRY'S DE ANTRO NYMPHARUM AS A
RELIABLE SOURCE OF DATA ON THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES

Here we must meet the following potentially serious objection: does Porphyry's testimony
appear to corroborate our thesis about a Mithraic principle of 'harmony of tension in
opposition' not because there really was such a principle but because it suited Porphyry's

was

allegorical purpose to pretend there

This objection should be set in the broader context of scepticism about the accuracy of
Porphyry's testimony on the Mithraic mysteries. The testimony is unreliable, so the
argument runs, because it is more Porphyry's own philosophical construction and/or
the construction of his philosophical sources than evidence for actually existing Mithra-
ism. I will not counter this larger charge here. It is essentially that made by Robert Turcan
in his Mithras Platonicus (1975), the title and subtitle (Recherches sur I'helle'nisation
philosophique de Mithra) of which encapsulate his case. I have argued against it else-
where, 28 in some detail (Beck 2000: 158—9, 177—9). The main counter-argument consists
in demonstrating that nothing in the archaeological data conflicts with the evidence of the
De antro and that much in fact confirms it. The sceptical case is further weakened when
we no longer have to assume that the Mithraic data challenged by the sceptics and
accepted by their opponents must have constituted a formal doctrine of the faith. As
we established in the preceding chapter, there is now no need to make this assumption.
We may treat Porphyry's Mithraic data at face value as bits and pieces of Mithraic practice
and theory, the latter tentative explications rather than fixed teaching. We do not have to
reconcile the data into a formally coherent doctrinal whole.

Let us then turn to the narrower objection that it is Porphyry's allegorical intent in the
De antro rather than any inherent Mithraic principle that has moulded the Mithraic data
into the appearance of a system of structured polarities. Now it is certainly true that the
De antro is far from being a disinterested discussion of the mysteries of Mithras. In fact,
Mithraism is quite incidental to its primary purpose, which is to explore certain philo-
sophical and cosmological themes through an allegorical explication of the cave described
by Homer in Odyssey 13.102—12, the cave near which the sleeping hero is set on his return
to his native land. 29 So peculiar is Homer's description, Porphyry argues (De antro 2—4),
that we cannot believe such a cave ever existed or could exist in the actual world.
Obviously, then, since it is neither a real cave to be found on Ithaca nor yet a realistic
fiction, Homer must intend something different. That something can only be allegory.
Homer's description is indeed bizarre from a naturalistic point of view, so one has every
sympathy with Porphyry's premise, if not with his solution.

28 Beck 1984: 2055-6; 1988: 42, n. 93, 80-2; 1994a: 106-7.

29 On the Neoplatonic allegorization of Homer see Lamberton 1986 (66—76, 119—33, 318—24
on this particular passage of the Odyssey) .

86 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I

Caves, Porphyry shows (De antro 5-9), are traditional symbols of the cosmos. That,
then, must be the intent of the Homeric cave, and for the balance of his essay and
with considerable ingenuity Porphyry argues that the cave's peculiar features bear this
meaning out.

Among these features are the cave's two 'doors' (thyrai), of which Homer says (Od.
13.110—12): 'the northern is for men to descend by, the southern is more for gods
(theoterai); men do not enter by the latter, for it is the route of immortals (athanaton) .'
For Porphyry this is perhaps the clearest indication of Homer's allegorical intent: for while
natural caves do not normally exhibit such features, the universe, as construed by
'theologians' (De antro 22), does. According to this cosmology, the universe possesses a
pair of gates set opposite each other. Not only do these gates lie to the north and the
south, but they are also transit points respectively for mortals and immortals. Through
the northern gate souls descend to earthly mortality, through the southern gate they
ascend again to celestial immortality. These of course are the soul gates already introduced
in the preceding section of this chapter.

As well as the unnamed 'theologians', Porphyry gives as his sources for the theory of
cosmic soul gates the second-century Neopythagorean 'Numenius and his associate
(hetairos) Cronius' (De antro 21, cf. 22). It was the same Cronius whom he had cited
initially as his authority for allegorizing the Homeric cave because of the lack of realism in
its description (2, 3). 30 Porphyry, in other words, received much of his argument ready
made. We have to construe the information contained in ch. 6, that the Mithraists
celebrated in their microcosmic 'caves' a mystery of the soul's descent and return, as
part and parcel of the same argument, even though the authority cited there is not
Cronius or Numenius but a certain Eubulus. 31

In the ampler passage on the soul gates (20—9) the Mithraists are not initially men-
tioned, but their cosmology — or their imputed cosmology — makes an explicit appear-
ance in ch. 24 with a detail concerning the celestial location of Mithras 'on the
equator ... at the equinoxes' which is then related to the location of the soul gates at
the solstices. The passage is of immense importance, and I shall accord it proper
consideration in due course. For the moment my concern is simply with its context —
and because of its context, with its reliability.

In sum, the Mithraic data of De antro 6 and 24 are so well dovetailed with the body of
evidence which Porphyry adduces to prove his point about the necessarily allegorical
intent of Homer's cave in general, and of its 'doors' in particular, that one cannot but
wonder if the data were not crafted or adapted to that end by Porphyry and/or his sources.
Are they really facts about Mithraism or 'facts' spun out of Mithraism by the requirements
of Neoplatonic explication?

That Porphyry and/or his philosophical sources might have cooked their data on the
mysteries is not in itself unlikely. Ancient authorities cannot be held to modern canons of
objectivity. If what they attribute to the mysteries is not what the Mithraism actually
practised or preached, then it is not a question of lies or fabrication, but rather, as it would
seem to them, the expression of an underlying intent or truth which a philosopher, qua

30 On Cronius and Numenius in relation to the De antro, see Turcan 1975: 62—5; Lamberton
1986: 318-24; on Numenius, Des Places 1973; Lamberton 1986: 54-77.

31 On Eubulus see Turcan 1975: 23-43.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: I 87

ideal initiate, was surely better qualified to elucidate than the cult's actual membership of
the moment.

Nevertheless, the fact that Porphyry and/or his sources would have had no scruples
about adapting or even inventing Mithraic data to suit their arguments does not
necessarily mean that they actually did so. It is far more likely that Mithraic doctrine
(in the weak sense of the term!) really was what the philosophers said it was. In that
case there would have been no need for invention or adaptation. The Mithraists would
be saying independently what the philosophers too were saying. Indeed it is likely, given
the chronological precedence of the Mysteries over the philosophical sources, that the
philosophers actually acquired from the Mysteries the cosmological details which they
attributed to them: in other words, a process of adoption, not adaptation. We should not
assume, surely, that inventiveness necessarily lies within the philosophical tradition rather
than the working religion.

As mentioned above, I have already demonstrated elsewhere that there are no insuper-
able discrepancies between Mithraic practice and theory as attested in Porphyry and
Mithraic practice and theory as archaeology has allowed us to recover them. Even if there
were major discrepancies, they would matter only in the context of the old model of an
internally consistent and monolithic Mithraic doctrine. In the end, I think, only the
outdated preconceptions about the 'wise' and the Vulgar' and the formers' monopoly on
intelligence, which we exposed in the preceding chapter, prevent one from construing the
De antro's Mithraic data at face value. Mithraic concepts in the De antro are polarized into
binary pairs because that was the way they were formulated in the Mithraic mysteries, not
because Porphyry and his philosophical sources twisted them into that shape for allegor-
ical ends.

Cognition and Representation

1. THE COGNITIVE APPROACH: ONTOGENETIC/
PHYLOGENETIC VERSUS CULTURAL

It is sometimes difficult to date the arrival of a new method or approach in
scholarship, but at least since the 1990s a new method focused on cognition has
been available to scholars of religion — including, since it is not restricted as to
date or culture, scholars of the religions of Graeco-Roman antiquity. The method
originated in the cognitive sciences, in particular evolutionary psychology, and in
anthropology. It is known as 'the cognitive science of religion' (Andresen
200 1^, b). I shall speak of it here simply as the 'cognitive method/approach
and of scholars and scholarship that take it as 'cognitivist'.

The cognitive method is a powerful explanatory tool. It is not, and does not
claim to be, interpretive. We will not understand Mithraism qua Mithraism any
the better for using it, but we may understand better how the Mithraic mysteries
functioned qua religion.

Cognitivist scholarship tends towards radical reductionism: to explain is to
explain away. 1 I see no heuristic benefit in making that larger negative claim.
Whether the representation-forming minds of Mithraists — or, for that matter, of
Christians or Muslims — touched on some otherworldly reality seems to me, in a
secular academic context, as idle to deny as to affirm. The cognitive method need
not be forced to answer ontological questions at a metaphysical level; sufficient
that it addresses, and addresses well, the modal question of how the human mind
forms and organizes 'religious' ideas in the here and now.

The human mind forms — and, as far back as the record shows, always has
formed — representations of supernatural beings. This is not a necessary activity
of the mind, for one can get through life without it, but it is certainly a very
common activity.

Not all representations of supernatural beings are 'religious', in the sense of
belonging to that domain of life which we label 'religion'. Nor do all religious
representations necessarily involve supernatural beings. Nevertheless, there is a

Notably S. E. Guthrie (1993, 1997).

Cognition and Representation 89

high degree of coincidence: more often than not, the mental representation of
supernatural beings is a vital part of practising a religion. Certainly, that was so
for the religions current in classical antiquity. Paganism was literally unthinkable
without the mental representation of the Olympian and other gods; likewise
Judaism without representation of Jahweh, or Christianity without the additional
representation of Jesus as the Christ. And so Mithraism: to be a Mithraist, one
must have (or feign having) Mithras 'in mind'.

While there is little religious thought that does not in a primary or secondary
way involve supernatural beings, the human mind does construct and entertain
representations of innumerable supernatural and paranatural beings entirely
outside the religious domain. Folk tale and fantasy literature abound with
inventions of this sort, whose connection with 'religion' is tenuous or nonexis-
tent. And that is precisely the point. Except in the degree of ontological com-
mitment, there is no essential difference between an ancient Athenian's
representation of Pallas Athena or an ancient Roman's of Jupiter Optimus
Maximus and a twenty-first-century person's representations of wizards, elves,
ores, and dementors d la J. R. R. Tolkien or J. K. Rowling.

The first achievement of the cognitive approach is thus to strip away the special
status of 'religious' representations of supernatural beings, and consequently to
de-mystify and de-problematize them. The ability to form mental representa-
tions of supernatural and paranatural beings is simply part of the evolved mental
endowment of the species Homo sapiens. As a further consequence, the cognitive
approach radically redefines the 'why' questions: why religion, why the gods?
Granted our natural propensity to entertain representations of the no n- natural, it
is not the presence of the gods in our minds that requires explanation so much as
their expulsion in relatively recent times; not 'why religion?' but rather 'why
religion no longer?' As the cognitivists emphasize, religion is 'natural', science is
not (McCauley 2000).

The second achievement of the cognitive approach is to divert part of the
inquiry into religion from the socio-cultural level both upwards to the phylo-
genetic and downwards to the ontogenetic. We form representations of super-
natural beings not by virtue of membership in societies and cultures but by virtue
of membership in the species Homo sapiens. Our particular societies and cultures
shape and standardize our representations, conforming them to the various
explicit traditions current and licensed in our various times and places. But it
is we who construct the gods, not 'society', not 'culture'; and 'we' means the
human mind functioning in the human brain. Hence the reorientation of the
inquiry from society or culture to the individual and the species. 2

At first glance this reorientation might seem to doom any project directed
towards an ancient, dead religion. How can we possibly access the representations
of minds long dead and gone? It is precisely here, however, that evolutionary

2 For an overview of this new approach, see Tooby and Cosmides 1992.

90 Cognition and Representation

theory comes to the rescue. Societies may come and go, cultures may change with
great rapidity, but the adaptive changes which significantly modify a species are
measured at the least in tens of millennia, not mere centuries. Evolutionary
science postulates no change in the human brain and mind which would have
rendered them markedly different now from what they were and how they
functioned in classical antiquity. Quite the contrary, we may safely assume that
we form our representations of supernatural beings, to all intents and purposes,
just as the ancients did. Any adaptive changes, so cognitive theory argues, took
place in earlier and far longer epochs as our remote ancestors passed through
the hunter-gatherer phase, and they took place in response to the exigencies of the
hunter-gatherers' environment. They occurred because they gave those hunter-
gatherers with these adaptations a competitive and reproductive edge over those
without. This is not to say that the capacity (and neural circuitry) for imagining
supernatural beings itself conferred a competitive edge, merely that it cannot
be a recent acquisition, something which radically differentiates us from our
conspecifics a score of centuries ago.

Same brain, same mind. Consequently, one may argue with some confidence
from the way we form 'religious' representations now to the way the ancients
formed them then. Given the comparatively rapid and radical shifts of culture,
we are actually on much firmer ground with the phylogenetic and the ontogen-
etic than with the socio-cultural.

While a comprehensive solution to the mind— body problem still eludes both
scientists and philosophers (is it even in principle attainable?), much is now
known about the neural processes in the brain which accompany various mental
states and events. This now opens up, for the first time, the possibility of
correlating what happens in the brain with what happens subjectively in the
mind of someone undergoing a religious experience. We shall touch on some of
this research later, but since it mostly involves unusual states of consciousness
(e.g. meditation, ecstasy), we shall pass it by for now and return to the more
pedestrian topic of the mind's representation of supernatural beings. Here one
may surely assume that just as there is nothing distinctively 'religious' about the
mental event of forming representations of beings not normally encountered in
the natural world, so the concomitant neural events do not differ, or do not
necessarily differ, according to whether or not the representations belong to the
subject's religious world. Different neuronal groups do not fire in different ways
whenever the mind is, as it were, 'doing religion'. The human brain has no
dedicated circuits for religion or 'the sacred'.

The topic of cognition in the religious domain is caught up in a much wider
debate taking place in the social sciences and in those disciplines, particularly
psychology and anthropology, which straddle the boundary between the life
sciences and the social sciences. The debate is about the acquisition and location
of 'culture'. Are cultural systems, of which religions constitute a particular form,
downloaded in a process of teaching and learning as content into an originally

Cognition and Representation 9 1

content-free human mind/brain? Or is the human mind/brain already endowed
with systems — software running on 'wetware', as the saying goes — selected in
and by the evolutionary process, which form representations modified, not
created, by interaction with conspecifics in a particular society and culture?

I incline to the latter scenario. Fortunately, a concise summary of its under-
lying model already exists in the introductory essay to a volume of studies by
some of its leading proponents (Tooby and Cosmides, in Barkow etal. 1992: 24).
These cognitivists call it the 'Integrated Causal Model' (ICM). I quote their
summary:

a. the human mind consists of a set of evolved information-processing mechanisms
instantiated in the human nervous system; 3

b. these mechanisms, and the developmental programs that produce them, are adapta-
tions produced by natural selection over evolutionary time in ancestral environ-
ments;

c. many of these mechanisms are functionally specialized to produce behavior that
solves particular adaptive problems, such as mate selection, language acquisition,
family relations, and cooperation;

d. to be functionally specialized, many of these mechanisms must be richly structured in
a content-specific way;

e. content-specific information-processing mechanisms generate some of the peculiar
content of human culture, including certain behaviors, artifacts, and linguistically
transmitted representations;

f. the cultural content generated by these and other mechanisms is then present to be
adopted or modified by psychological mechanisms situated in other members of the
population;

g. this sets up epidemiological and historical population-level processes; and

h. these processes are located in particular ecological, economic, demographic, and
intergroup social contexts or environments.

To understand what is new and different about the ICM, we should also look
at the traditional model which the ICM challenges and aims to supplant. This
'Standard Social Science Model' (SSSM — again the term is that of the cognitiv-
ists), is likewise conveniently summarized by Tooby and Cosmides (1992: 31 f.).
Though they are of course opposed to this model, their summary of it is fair and
un tendentious. I quote the first seven propositions (abbreviating where feasible
without loss of substance). 4 They convey the implicit assumptions which usually
underlie inquiries, such as ours, into cultural phenomena. These are cards which
ought to be on the table, but seldom are:

1. Particular human groups are properly characterized typologically as having 'a' cul-
ture, which consists of widely distributed . . . behavioral practices, beliefs, ideation

3 In this sort of context, 'nervous system' includes, but is not limited to, the brain (my footnote).

4 The remaining four propositions (8—1 1) in effect elaborate the first seven. Though useful, they
can be omitted here without prejudice to the SSSM or to its alternative, the ICM.

92 Cognition and Representation

systems, systems of significant symbols, or informational substance of some kind.
Cultures are more or less bounded entities, although cultural elements may diffuse
across boundaries.

2. These common elements are maintained and transmitted 'by the group', an entity
that has cross-generational continuity.

3. The existence of separate streams of. . . culture ... is the explanation for human
within-group similarities and between-group differences. In fact, all between-group
differences . . . are referred to as cultural differences and all within-group similarities
are regarded as the expressions of a particular culture. . . .

4. Unless other factors intervene, the culture ... is accurately replicated from generation
to generation.

5. This process is maintained through learning, a well-understood and unitary process.

6. This process of learning can be seen ... as a group-organized process called social-
ization, imposed by the group on the child.

7. The individual is the more or less passive recipient of her culture and is the product
of that culture.

What difference does it make in practice that we adopt the 'integrated causal
model' (ICM) rather than the 'standard social science model' (SSSM) for our
inquiry into the Mithraic mysteries? We are already committed, by placing
ourselves in the Geertzian symbolist tradition, 5 to treating the Mithraic mysteries
as a cultural system, which would seem to position us more comfortably in the
SSSM camp. Of course, the ICM does not preclude treating religion as a cultural
system (propositions 'f through 'h'); so our question is rather, what advantage
does the ICM confer over the SSSM?

At one level the answer is, none at all. When, for descriptive purposes, we
uncouple the mysteries from their actual initiates, it makes sense to treat them as
an autonomous cultural system, or more precisely as a subsystem of the wider
culture of Graeco-Roman paganism. This we did in our 'template for the re-
description of the mysteries' presented in Chapter 1 (sect. 3), where the proposi-
tions were stated in alternative forms: 'the first line [in each proposition] repre-
sents the mysteries as an autonomous system acting on the initiate; the
second . . . from the initiate's point of view as something apprehended and
accepted.'

Clearly the first of the alternative forms coheres better with the 'standard social
scientific model' and the second with the 'integrated causal model'. Since, as
I have already stated, our ultimate quarry is the initiates' apprehension of their
mysteries (qua symbol system) rather than the mysteries per se, the ICM will be
my preferred model both over the longer haul and especially in the present
chapter in which I focus on cognition.

5 Above, Ch. 1, sects. 1—2.

Cognition and Representation 93

2. GODS IN MIND: COGNITION AND THE
REPRESENTATION OF SUPERNATURAL BEINGS

Perhaps the best application to date of the cognitivist approach to religion, and
certainly one of the most accessible, is Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained (2001).
We shall accordingly hew quite closely to his model of religion in tracing the
mental representations of an initiate of the Mithraic mysteries. Remember, as we
do so, that the sole and sufficient warrant for this seemingly audacious project is
the general evolutionist postulate that the lapsed time between Mithraists and
moderns is simply too short for the brains and minds of our species to have
undergone adaptations significant enough to render invalid extrapolations from
'mind doing religion now' to 'mind doing religion then'. Because of this we are at
no insurmountable disadvantage to Boyer and other cognitivists who treat of
contemporary religion and have access to contemporary minds by way of
psychological, sociological, and ethnographic research.

To the diachronic postulate of the sameness of the brain/mind now and two
millennia ago must be added a synchronic postulate: that there is no essential
difference in the way in which believers and non-believers construct mental
representations of supernatural beings. The content and associations of a Persian's,
a Roman's, and a Christian's representations of Mithras no doubt differed, and all
these certainly differed from a modern historian of religion's representations of
Mithras, but the mental and underlying neural processes of representation did not
and do not differ.

The cognitive approach, we have already seen, locates a religion in the
representation-forming minds of those who adhere to it, whether actively or
passively. As humans we all form representations of beings which do not exist in
the natural world, at least in a normal, empirically testable way. Such represen-
tations are for the most part evanescent. Some representations, however, because
they are conformable to the representations of others in the same socio-cultural
group, are preserved, fostered, and modified by the interaction of mind with
mind; also of mind with the projections of mind in the actual world: text, creed,
artistic representations, mimetic ritual, and so on. Very occasionally, a new
religion is born, or an old religion substantially modified, when the novel
representations of a single mind, then of the minds of a small founding group,
successfully commend themselves over wider and wider circles, and the apparatus
of the religion, in whatever form is deemed necessary or appropriate, is con-
structed in the common objective world. 6 A religion dies when no one remains to
energize its outward forms and, more fundamentally, to make its subjective
representations within the context of those outward forms. Because they exist

6 Boyer 2001: 46—7. Dan Sperber (1996) treats cultures, and a fortiori religions, as epidemics of
mental representations. He intends 'epidemics' literally, not metaphorically.

94 Cognition and Representation

in the external, objective, common world, the forms linger on in the fossilized
record of text and artefact. From the record we seek to recapture, as far as an
external inquirer can, something of the mental representations that were the
living religion.

To avoid over-privileging religion or 'religious' representations, we should
recall that the very same mental processes create and perpetuate representations
of make-believe beings, whether natural or supernatural, in the domain of art,
both visual and verbal. Sir John Falstaff, inanimate in Shakespeare's text, lives on
in the representation-forming minds of audiences and readers, as do the afore-
mentioned wizards, elves, ores, and dementors of Tolkien and Rowling. Thus too
have the Olympian immortals fled mortality by migrating to the aesthetic
domain — where of course they were always at home: a consideration which
merely returns us to our postulate that the process of forming representations
of the gods did not — and does not — vary; regardless of whether those forming
the representations were witnessing a sacrifice in some ancient community, a
tragedy in fifth-century bce Athens, or a pantomime in first-century ce Rome.

Religion, then, exists in, and consists of, a ferment of representations in the
minds of its living adherents. From the general to the particular, it follows that
the Mithraic mysteries were the mental representations of successive generations
of initiates in their far-flung 'caves' and autonomous brotherhoods throughout
the Roman empire.

3. NEGOTIATING REPRESENTATIONS

Adopting a cognitive approach and locating 'religion' in the minds of its
adherents pays two rich and immediate dividends. First, the cognitive model
accommodates well the rather fluid concept of doctrine which I proposed
towards the end of Chapter 4: 'In place of doctrine as a definite body of explicit
teaching, we have re-characterized it as a loose web of interpretation, both actual
and potential, located in the symbol system of the mysteries' (sect. 12); alterna-
tively, as 'an indeterminate set of explanations which senior Mithraists would
impart to their juniors or explore among themselves' (sect. 10). From a cognitive
perspective, then, doctrine is that which within the given religious group is
negotiated (or negotiable) concerning legitimate representations. As we said above
(preceding section) of humanity's propensity for forming mental representations
of supernatural beings, 'some representations . . . because they are conformable to
the representations of others in the same socio-cultural group, are preserved,
fostered, and modified by the interaction of mind with mind; also of mind with
the projections of mind in the actual world: text, creed, artistic representations,
mimetic ritual, and so on.'

Legitimate representations can — but need not necessarily — be negotiated
explicitly and by formal process. They are thereby reified — and sanctified — in

Cognition and Representation 95

creeds, catechisms, canons of scripture, and the like. This was the road taken by
Christianity. Mithraism followed another and less divisive road: from the overall
conformity of its mithraea and figured monuments to certain norms, one may
infer that it managed to maintain a coherence of mental representation without
resort to explicit doctrinal formulations. Creeds and the like, once formulated,
objectify and sanctify doctrine, and so make it something to defend and police, a
criterion for inclusion and exclusion. It may be (though I doubt it) for want of
extant evidence, but it seems improbable that there were Mithraic heretics.
'Heresy' and the odium which attaches to it only become possible when there
is an 'orthodoxy' to measure it against.

It is hermeneutically liberating to shake off the task of reconstructing an
explicit but no longer extant Mithraic doctrine; likewise the task of rebutting
the opposite but more insidious charge that Mithraism, lacking formulated
doctrine, was for that reason a second-class or inferior religion. If anything, its
coherent yet unprescribed way of normalizing the mental representations of its
initiates seems, if not more sophisticated, at least more admirable. It is certainly
more irenic.

The cognitive approach compels us to interpret and explain the mysteries
always in terms of actual on-the-ground Mithraism. We focus not on an
abstracted system (although for descriptive purposes one must sometimes treat
it as such), but on those interactive processes of mental representation by which
successive cohorts of initiates in their autonomous 'caves' apprehended and
communicated their mysteries. These surely are the byponoiai, the 'under-
thoughts' which, as we saw in Chapter 4 (sect. 10), Plutarch so perceptively
listed together with the 'images' (eikones) and 'imitations' (mimemata) as the gifts
of another mystery-cult deity to her initiates.

As a benign consequence, much that was in dispute can now be deproblema-
tized. For instance, the issue of 'generalizing about Mithraic doctrine from
unusual monuments' which we addressed in Chapter 4 (sect. 9) becomes less
urgent. We still want to explore whether or not an unusual monumental feature
points to a more widespread element in Mithraic thought, but whether it is
orthodox or heterodox is not at issue. First and foremost, it is the product
of negotiation, explicit or tacit, between the representation-forming minds
of those particular initiates in that particular group. It is what they thought
consonant with their mysteries then and there. We return to our point
that Mithraic doctrine is whatever accords with what a Mithraic Father thinks
is Mithraic doctrine. Since there was no overarching objectified code to which
appeal could be made, merely norms perpetuated for the most part in iconog-
raphy and the design of sacred space, there was little constraint on innovation.
The surprise is not the occasional variant, but the unpoliced integrity, amounting
almost to unanimity, of the mysteries over such an expanse of time and territory.

The cognitive approach also lets us deproblematize what appear to be doctri-
nal contradictions. For example, I have referred to the paradox that Mithras both

96 Cognition and Representation

is and is not the Sun: is, because the Unconquered Sun is his cult title; is not,
because Sol is a separate person in certain episodes (notably, the banquet
following the bull-killing) in which the two deities participate. Cognitive
theory predicts, and can demonstrate experimentally, the generation of such
contradictions in the formation and transmission of religious concepts (Boyer
2001: 78— 89). 7 Although their contents may defy logic, their genesis in the
mental representation of supernatural beings is a normal enough process
psychologically. Consequently, while they may be described and explored, there
is nothing to explain or resolve — unless the religious group itself chooses to
problematize the paradox, as Christianity notoriously has done with, for ex-
ample, the dual nature of Christ.

4. REINTEGRATING THE WISE AND THE VULGAR

Now to the second dividend paid by the cognitive approach. Here I shall risk a
value-judgement. To some extent I have already done so, in that I have suggested
that Mithraism, in eschewing explicit doctrine and yet successfully transmitting
doctrinal norms by instantiation in the symbol complexes of its monuments, was
in this regard superior to Christianity. That judgement entailed of course a more
general judgement about the baleful effect of formulated doctrine as a cause of
discord — and worse. If you consider explicit doctrine benign or at least harmless,
my claim for Mithraism's superiority will not have been persuasive.

Now, however, I make a larger claim, not for the mysteries of Mithras but for
the paradigm of religion which the cognitive approach implies. In locating
'religion' in the representation-forming minds of its adherents, the cognitive
approach emphasizes its creative and egalitarian strain.

That assertion might surprise both the cognitivists and their opponents. The
cognitive approach is necessarily associated with evolutionary psychology. We
form our representations as we do because the minds/brains of our hunter-
gatherer ancestors evolved as they did. So we are prisoners of the mental/neural
adaptations they underwent, doomed to repeat their thinking and behaviour
until our post-Neolithic age has clocked sufficient tens of millennia to generate
and select for further mind/brain adaptations more suited to an environment
which will then itself be slipping inexorably into the irrelevance of the past.

7 Note the experiment (p. 88) in which a group of subjects was asked first to read stories about an
omnipotent and omnipresent god who (e.g.) saves a man's life and simultaneously helps a woman
find her lost purse, and then to retell the stories. Without giving up the divine attributes of
omnipotence and omnipresence, 'many subjects said that God had helped one person out and
then [italics in original] turned his attention to the others plight'. The observed effect was the same
with believers and non-believers and in India and the USA. (Not without interest is the gender
stereotyping both of God and of his imagined beneficiaries, so easy is it to represent a male god and a
female human losing her purse.)

Cognition and Representation 97

This gloomy scenario may be countered in one of two ways. Opponents of
evolutionary psychology reply that because we have reached a level at which we
can communicate and store information transgenerationally, societal evolution
has more or less replaced biological evolution and so emancipated our species
from the snail's pace of the latter. A better response, so it seems to me at least, is to
retain evolutionary psychology's model, since it is supported by a growing body
of hard neurological evidence, but to set aside the entailment of determinism
with which it is invested. That our brain/mind adaptations were selected for in
our hunter-gatherer ancestors manifestly does not condemn our inference sys-
tems, thus evolved, to think only hunter-gatherer thoughts and to solve only
hunter-gatherer problems until at long last natural selection rolls out a phenotype
better adapted to its environment.

Let us then postulate a measure of individual human autonomy within the
broad scenario modelled by evolutionary psychology. There is no contradiction,
unless one is committed a priori to determinism as a universal principle.

Evolutionary psychology's theory of mind frees us from another and more
insidious tyranny, societal determinism. This you may readily appreciate by
reviewing the two models, 'Integrated Causal' and 'Standard Social Science',
presented earlier in this chapter. It is of course true that we are largely condi-
tioned by and into our social systems — what else, after all, is education? But that
we are entirely the product of these systems, that our minds are virtually empty
slates on which our cultures inscribe themselves, this we need not — indeed
should not — accept; for psychological research shows otherwise.

A religion, then, while it lives, is a dialogue of minds: admittedly, a lopsided
dialogue in which the voice of authority preponderates, whether the actual voices
of leaders and exegetes or the recorded and materialized voices of sacred text,
creed, liturgy, artefact, and so on; but a dialogue nonetheless, because the
representation-forming minds of the led are as necessary to it as the representa-
tion-forming minds of the leaders.

Our cognitive approach focuses, in an egalitarian way, on individual minds
calibrating their representations in negotiation, mostly below the level of con-
scious intent, with other minds in the culture and environment of Mithraism —
which itself is the product or instantiation of those negotiated representations. In
so doing, we return some measure of agency to the rank and file, breaking the
mortmain on the mysteries assigned to the 'wise' in antiquity and in modern
times to the system itself as socio-cultural construct. We return ownership, not of
course to the led alone, but to the members, the 'hand-claspers' {syndexioi) , each
in his proper status, gathered in their 'caves'.

I take this position not just to indulge a sentimental egalitarianism, but to
correct a 'folk theory of mind' 8 which lurks unexamined among the learned,

8 I use the term in its technical sense of a non-specialist commonsensical set of working
assumptions about the way other minds — and by inference one's own — operate.

98 Cognition and Representation

though fortunately less so now than in earlier generations. This folk theory of
mind assumes that the less learned are substantially less sophisticated, less
discriminating in their mental representations, than the more learned. As a
purely aesthetic judgement about informed and uninformed taste, this is perhaps
so; likewise as an intellectual judgement about understanding an argument and
failing to understand an argument. But as a cognitive judgement about processes
of representation and inference it is nonsense — and pernicious nonsense at that.
In religion and in the study of religion, as we saw in Chapter 4, it licenses the
spurious separation of the 'wise' and the Vulgar' on which the ancients harped
and a no less spurious class dichotomy which modern scholars of antiquity
occasionally still apply.

In contrast, the cognitive approach adopted here treats religion in general, and
of course 'mysteries' in particular, as works continuously in progress, re-created
across the generations as their members, leaders and led alike, fashion their
mental representations by interaction both with each other and with the religion's
external memory archived in text, ritual, symbolic iconography, and so on. In this
way the cognitive approach, as I claimed above, emphasizes that which in religion
is creative and egalitarian.

As it happens, Mithraism towards the end of its historic lifespan furnishes an
excellent example of a religion in which ownership, through an implicit claim to
monopolize the agenda of representation, gravitated to the leadership. The lost
set of inscriptions V400— 5 from the S. Silvestro in Capite mithraeum in Rome
records a series of grade initiations undertaken by two members of the pagan
senatorial aristocracy, Nonius Victor Olympius and Aurelius Victor Augentius,
between the years 357 and 376. The former was the latter's (biological) father; in
the mysteries he held the rank of 'Father of Fathers' {pater patrum) and his
son that of Father. By 376 Aurelius Victor Augentius had ascended to
his father's rank, probably on the latter's death, since in the inscription of that
year (V403) his father is not mentioned. What is so interesting about
these inscriptions is what they do not say. There is no mention of Mithras, and
there is no mention of those inducted into the various grades — with one
exception: in 376 (V403) Aurelius Victor Augentius initiates his 13-year-old
son Aemilianus Corfinius Olympius into the initial grade of Raven. Clearly,
what the mysteries were largely 'about' for this noble family was the noble
family itself, not Mithras, not the cult brothers, but themselves. What it was
'about' for the rank and file of this cult group, presumably composed largely
of the family's clients and household, we can never know. But one may reason-
ably conjecture that appropriate representations of the patronal hierarchy
were encouraged. This is not to say that the mysteries practised under this
noble family's aegis were less genuine, less alive, than those of earlier times
and other places. Rather, it is to infer from the evidence of surface symptoms a
change in how the initiates represented the mysteries to themselves and each
other.

Cognition and Representation 99

APPENDIX: COMPREHENDING THE PANTOMIME: LUCIAN, ON

THE DANCE

The capacity to form representations of non- or supernatural beings, we have accepted, is
a constant of the human mind, and it does not operate exclusively in some special
religious domain. As an example from antiquity I gave the audience's representation of
supernatural beings at the pantomime in first-century ce Rome. The example of Roman
pantomime was not chosen at random, for it also helps to give the lie to the assumption
challenged in the preceding section: namely that cognition in the learned differs radically
from, and is superior to, cognition in the unlearned. (To avoid confusion latent in the
term 'representation', note that I am not of course talking about the artist's public and
performative 'representation' of the supernatural being, but of the audience's inner mental
representations prompted by the artist's representation in performance.)

The pantomime, as an art form in ancient Rome, was both hugely popular and very
demanding on the audience because of the extreme artificiality of its conventions. To
comprehend the pantomime, to 'get it', the audience had to run, simultaneously and
subconsciously, an array of mental programs (to use the computing metaphor) to co-
ordinate and translate into a unified and meaningful experience an audio-visual input
quite remote from the input that they would receive if viewing/hearing the corresponding
events in real time and real life. To the artificialities of other forms of ancient drama
(principally tragedy and comedy) the pantomime added the convention of divorcing the
spoken or sung word from the physical action, with the primary focus on the latter. The
pantomime — the term properly belongs to the actor rather than the genre — conveyed the
action by dance and gesture alone, accompanied by music. Words sung by a choir or
spoken by a narrator were optional and strictly unnecessary in that to rely on them for
communication of meaning would be considered an artistic failure. The pantomime was
of course masked, and so could convey nothing by facial expression. Moreover, the acme
of his art was the ability to carry all the roles sequentially, even of characters who in real
time would be interacting concurrently.

The pantomime is irretrievably lost, since, unlike tragedy and comedy, such fragments
of texts as have survived are obviously of slight importance to the art. We do, however,
possess some testimony to the pantomime of much greater value to our present purpose: a
comprehensive and intelligent critique of the pantomime as an art form, written while it
was still performed. This work, composed as a dialogue, is entitled On the dance (De
saltatione); it was written by Lucian, a satirical essayist of the second century ce. The work
is particularly relevant to our present topic, for like much ancient criticism of drama it is
more concerned with how the audience comprehends and responds to the performance
than with a formal definition and description of the art.

Lucian makes it clear that the mass audience of the pantomime did indeed 'get it': that
is, they reacted in a way that, to a cognitivist, shows that the inference and data-processing
systems of their minds, operating for the most part below the conscious level, took the
pantomime's highly complicated and unnaturalistic conventions in their stride. They
translated effortlessly the stylized movements and gestures of a single silent performer into
a sequence of meaningfully related interactions and verbal exchanges between a multi-
plicity of persons. Lucian tells the story of an unnamed pantomime who in Nero's reign

100 Cognition and Representation

undertook to refute the charge that his art owed its success solely to the accessories ('the
silk vestments, the beautiful mask, the flute and its quavers, and the sweet voices of the
singers') by performing without music and chorus:

Enjoining silence upon the stampers and flute-players and upon the chorus itself, quite unsup-
ported, he danced the amours of Aphrodite and Ares, Helius tattling, Hephaestus laying his plot and
trapping both of them with his entangling bonds, the gods who came in on them, portrayed
individually, Aphrodite ashamed, Ares seeking cover and begging for mercy. . . {De salt. 63, Loeb
trans.)

The challenger, a Cynic philosopher named Demetrius, withdrew the charge, shouting
to the pantomime still on stage: 'I hear the story that you are acting, man, I do not just
see it; you seem to me to be talking with your hands!' The point, for us, is that
Demetrius now 'gets' and verbalizes what the groundlings have 'got' or apprehended all
along.

Lucian has much to say about the way in which ordinary people respond to the
pantomime, particularly about their emotional responses, of which he — or perhaps we
should say, the speaker whom he privileges in the dialogue — generally approves, thus
accepting the moral and educative value of the performance {De salt. 72, 79, 81). People
weep when they rightly should, and they feel and express indignation when they rightly
should. This, of course, they can only do if they have comprehended the intent of the
highly abstracted and artificial show which their eyes and ears have taken in. Successful
cognition is the necessary precondition for appropriate affective response.

Another indication of successful cognition among the groundlings can be seen in their
banter with the performers. Again, Lucian (or his dialogue persona) treats this not
censoriously but positively as a form of popular quality control by which 'entire peoples'
(holoi demoi) — he is speaking here specifically of the Antiochenes — 'regulate (rhythmi-
zein) its [i.e. the dance's] good and bad points'. The examples he gives seem quite trivial:

When a diminutive dancer made his entrance and began to play Hector, they all cried out in a single
voice, 'Ho there, Astyanax! where's Hector?' On another occasion, when a man who was extremely
tall undertook to dance Capaneus and assault the walls of Thebes, 'Step over the wall', they said,
'you have no need of a ladder!' {De salt. 76, Loeb trans.)

However, for all their simplicity, these and other examples indicate a high level of cognitive
sophistication. Together, the anecdotes demonstrate the audience's ability not only to
comprehend the performance but also to discriminate consciously between that which is
represented in performance and the performative representation. They heckle because they
can detect, and consciously represent to themselves, an amusing dissonance between
character and actor. Metatheatricality, it seems, was well understood by the dregs of the
Orontes, and presumably of the Tiber too. To reach that level of conscious appreciation,
the mind — of the learned and unlearned alike — must first have developed a massive
capacity for complicated feats of cognition below the threshold of reflective consciousness.
I offer one final example of audience response, because Lucian uses it to contrast the
reaction of the vulgar with the reaction of the refined. It is the story of a pantomime who
got carried away by his own performance of the mad Ajax:

He tore the clothes off one of the men who beat time with the iron shoe, and snatching a flute from
one of the accompanists, with a vigorous blow he cracked the crown of Odysseus, who was standing

Cognition and Representation 101

near exulting in his victory. . . . 9 Coming down among the public, he seated himself among the
senators, between two ex-consuls, who were very much afraid that he would seize one of them and
drub him, taking him for a wether. {De salt. 83, Loeb trans.)

The crowd, as the saying goes, went wild, 'leaping, and shouting and flinging up their
garments'. Lucian (or his dialogue persona) treats it as a case of triple madness: the actor,
miming the madness of Ajax, goes mad himself, and the 'riff- raff and absolutely unen-
lightened (surphetodeis kai . . . idiotai) went mad along with him (synememenei) '. However,
Lucian has already said far too much to make this diagnosis credible, for all that it is
rhetorically effective and conforms to class stereotypes. More likely, the groundlings
comprehended the actor's transgression of performative boundaries just as well as did
the 'politer sort' (asteioteroi) who Lucian says 'understood and were ashamed', covering
their embarrassment with lukewarm applause rather than stony silence. The vulgar,
I suggest, understood the transgression perfectly well; they thoroughly enjoyed it and
entered into its spirit. If 'Ajax' could break convention and export his madness into the
real world, then the audience could reciprocate from the real world by 'madly' entering
the performance. The audience didn't go mad with Ajax, they played mad with Ajax'.

9 This performance clearly involved more than a single dancer.

The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System:
II. The Mithraeum

1. THE SYMBOL COMPLEX OF THE MITHRAEUM AS
'IMAGE OF THE UNIVERSE'

As we saw in Chapter 5, the Graeco-Roman model of the universe instantiates, in
the broadly Platonic tradition to which the Mithraic mysteries belonged, a
hierarchy of binary oppositions such as we find in De antro 29. The Mithraists
replicated this model of the universe by designing their meeting places as
authentic microcosms, models in the literal, physical sense of the word. We
know this of course from our 'gateway text', Porphyry's De antro 6: 1

Similarly, the Persians call the place a cave where they introduce an initiate to the mysteries,
revealing to him the path by which souls descend and go back again. For Eubulus tells us
that Zoroaster was the first to dedicate a natural cave in honour of Mithras, the creator and
father of all; it was located in the mountains near Persia and had flowers and springs. This
cave bore for him the image of the Cosmos (eikona kosmou) which Mithras had created,
and the things which the cave contained, by their proportionate arrangement, provided
him with symbols of the elements and climates of the Cosmos (ton d" entos kata symmetrous
apostaseis symbola pheronton ton kosmikon stoicheion kai klimaton). After Zoroaster others
adopted the custom of performing their rites of initiation in caves and grottoes which were
either natural or artificial, (trans. Arethusa edn.)

There are surely few religions for which we are told so succinctly the esoteric
name, the form, the design principle, the function, and the postulated origin of
their sacred space. More to the present purpose, we are also told that the
effectiveness of the Mithraists' 'cave' as an instrument for getting the initiates
from heaven to earth and back again depends on symbolic authenticity. It is
because its complex of symbols is 'proportionately arranged' that the mithraeum
is an accurate 'likeness of the cosmos' and so can realize its ritual intent.

See the opening sections of Chs. 2 and 4, abo

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

103

2. THE BLUEPRINT FOR THE MITHRAEUM

In this chapter I shall sketch out the design of the Mithraic 'cave' as 'cosmic
model'. There is no need to do this at any great length, for I have described the
blueprint in earlier studies (Beck 1994a:; 2000: 1 58-63). 2 The 'blueprint', both
as diagram (see Figs. 2 and 3) and as description, is a reconstruction of an ideal
mithraeum based on data from Porphyry's De antro and actual mithraea, notably
the Ostian Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres ('Sette Sfere', V239-49). By 'ideal
mithraeum' I mean just that; I do not mean the mithraeum that all mithraea
should have been but, with the exception of Sette Sfere, failed to be.

cult -niche

tauroctonous Sol Mithras
with equinoctial symbols

left bench

right bench

on M's right

on M's left

(east

WEST>

f u

' T

mid-bench niche

= northern tropic

(i.e. summer solstice)

= gate of descent

into genesis

E
R
N

A
N

E
T

L
/

E
1

. H
V E
J R
I H
" N

mid-bench niche
= southern tropic
^ (i.e. winter solstice
= gate of ascent
into apogenesis

S
1

(3)

k < c

5 S

^WEST

EAST)

k G

Cautopates
(lowered torch)

N
S

ajj

N
S

Cautes

(raised torch)

,\e

Fig. 2. The mithraeum as 'image of the universe'. Composite reconstruction from
Porphyry, De antro nympharum (esp. 6 and 24) and excavated sites, principally the
Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres, Ostia

2 See also Gordon 1976a; 1988: 50-60. There is thus no need to redeploy the supporting
argumentation or once again to justify my reliance on Porphyry's input.

SUMMER

Fig. 3. The Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres (Sette Sfere), Ostia, with symbols substituted for the images of the planets and signs of the zodiac

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 105

The mithraeum is 'structure D2' in our 'template for the redescription of the
mysteries' (Chapter 1):

Dl. The complexes of symbols conveying the axioms and motifs of the mysteries in their

various domains are manifested concretely. . .
D2. The initiate apprehends the symbol complexes conveying the axioms and motifs of

the mysteries in their various domains . . .
on structured sites; in the mysteries there are three principal and distinctive structures:

1 . the physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony

2. the physical structure of the mithraeum

3. the organizational structure of the seven grades

1. The mithraeum, as also the tauroctony, is a necessary structure. No
mithraeum, no Mysteries of Mithras.

2. As Porphyry correctly reports, all mithraea are 'caves', both in nomenclat-
ure and intent. Where feasible they were sited in natural caves. They are 'caves' in
conformity with the ancient trope 'cave — universe'.

3. As to shape, the most faithful model of the universe would be a dome
replicating the celestial sphere (as most obviously in a modern planetarium).
Domed structures however are relatively expensive. Consequently, cosmic
models of this sort tend to be large public structures such as the Pantheon,
which Dio (53.27.2) thought was 'domed so as to resemble the heavens' {tho-
loeides on toi ouranoi proseoiken) . The Mithraists of course were not in that league.
They had to be content with rectangular rooms, as often as not recycled from
some other function. Fortunately, barrel vaulting in the lower levels of multi-
purpose buildings provided a cave-like curvature in cross-section which would
intimate the vault of heaven. Important 'caves' of this type include the Caesarea
mithraeum (Bull 1978), the mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere (V180,
Vermaseren 1971), the Marino mithraeum (Vermaseren 1982); in Rome the
San Clemente (V338), Barberini (V389), Thermae Antoninianae (V 457), and
Sta Prisca (V476) mithraea; and in Ostia the Terme del Mitra (V 229) and 'di
Fructosus' (V 226) mithraea. Apart from affordability, a rectangular room has the
great advantage that it allows the designer to display cosmic polarities by means
of the room's opposite sides and ends.

4. An appropriate shape and 'proportionate arrangement' within generate for
the mithraeum the vital quality of epitedeiotes = 'fitness', 'suitability', 'function-
ality'. Epitedeiotes is defined in this illuminating passage from Sallustius (De diis
et mundo 15, trans. Nock): 'The providence of the gods stretches everywhere and
needs only fitness for its enjoyment (hypodochen). Now all fitness is produced by
imitation and likeness {mimesei kai homoioteti). That is why temples are a copy of
(mimountai) heaven, altars of earth, images of life . . . ' Interestingly, our 'gateway
text' from De antro 6 continues in much the same vein: 'Just as they consecrated
to the Olympian gods temples, shrines and altars, to terrestrial deities and heroes
sacrificial hearths, and to the gods of the underworld ritual pits or trenches, so

106 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

they dedicated caves and grottoes to the Cosmos.' 'Imitation and likeness' are
clearly the key to 'fitness'. But fitness for what? To function, surely. And the
function of the Mithraic 'cave' = cosmos is to get the initiates in and out, down
and up again along the route of souls.

5. The Mithraic 'cave' is indefinitely replicable. 3 No mithraeum, as far as we
know, is any more special or authentic than any other mithraeum, except of
course the mithraeum that never was, Zoroaster's cave 'in the mountains near
Persia'. Put another way, there is no unique or proper place on earth to worship
Mithras and to perform his mysteries. How could there be, when the entire
universe is his creation and the 'cave' where he is worshipped is the universe?

6. A cave is an appropriate image of the universe because, like the universe, it
is an inside without an outside. That is why, ideologically at least, the exterior of a
mithraeum, in dramatic contrast to the exteriors of standard Greek and Roman
temples, does not matter. Literally, it does not signify. Economic considerations
no doubt played their part, but in an urban context an anonymous room or suite
of rooms makes good symbolic sense.

6.1. To point up the paradox of containing a symbol of the universe within
something that is necessarily less than the universe, the Mithraists designed —
though not as a conscious exercise — what one might call 'the Marino experience'.
Marino is a small town in the Alban Hills. The mithraeum there is a cave bored
deep into the hillside below. 4 As you move down the entrance ramp and into the
unusually long (29.2 m) and narrow (3.1 m) cult room, your focus of attention
is of course the tauroctony, here painted, as in the Capua and Barberini mithraea,
on the end wall. The bull-killing, as is normal in the media of fresco and relief
sculpture, takes place within a cave. At Marino the cave is represented carefully
and naturalistically So at the heart of the actual cavern which is also an esoteric
'cave' qua image of the universe you confront another cave in two-dimensional
representation. By the inexorable logic of the symbolism which here holds sway
this cave too must be a universe — a universe inside a universe. But that is not the
end of it, for as your eye is drawn inwards into the scene within this painted
cosmic cave you see yet another universe; and this final inmost universe is not a
cave, not a symbol, but the real thing — or as close to the real thing as a two-
dimensional painted representation can get. As is usual, Mithras' cloak is shown
billowing out behind him as if in a strong wind, 5 revealing the cloak's lining. But

3 On replicability see Smith 1987: 74-95 (the chaptet of To Take Place nicely entitled 'To
teplace').

4 The Marino mithtaeum is the subject of a monograph by M. J. Vermaseren (1982). See in
particular plate I, a view back up the aisle towards the entrance ramp, and the fold-out diagram at
the end, showing (fig. 5) the floor plan and longitudinal and latitudinal cross-sections with an
analogous diagram (fig. 6) for the Barberini mithraeum (V389).

5 Vermaseren 1982: pis. Ill and IV. The intent of this convention is not, I think, to suggest that
there happened to be a strong wind blowing on the day of the bull-killing, but to convey the
impression of cosmic motion. Appearances to the contrary, deus sol invictus mithras rushes
through space and so creates both Space and Time.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 107

that lining is no piece of fabric. In fact it is no thing at all; rather it is an
emptiness, a transparency, a window on a field of stars. Six out of the array of stars
are distinguished by their size and brilliance. Clearly the planets are intended, the
missing seventh, the Sun, being Sol Mithras who wears the cloak. The stars spill
out over Mithras' tunic, giving the god a peculiar transparency, as if he belongs
both in the universe of the painted cave and in the universe of stars and planets
framed by the cloak — which of course he does because the universe at all levels is
his. In sum, a painted universe of stars and planets, its sphericity emphasized by
lightly brushed arcs of blue and gold, is nested within a painted image of the
universe, the cave which frames the scene of the bull-killing, which in turn is
nested in a three-dimensional image of the universe, the symbolic Mithraic 'cave'
which in this instance is a real physical cave deep within the earth. The moral?
The inside is ampler than the outside; the contained contains the container;
totum pro toto.

7. The key to the design of the mithraeum's interior is Porphyry De antro 24:

[A.] To Mithras, as his proper seat, they assigned the equinoxes.

[B.] Thus he carries the knife of Aries, the sign of Mars, and is borne on the bull of

Venus; Libra is also the sign of Venus, like Taurus.
[C] As creator and master of genesis, Mithras is set on the equator with the northern

signs on his right and the southern signs to his left.
[D.] They set Cautes to the south because of its heat and Cautopates to the north

because of the coldness of its wind.

7.1. Proposition 'B' gives two iconographic 'facts' about the composition of
the tauroctony which validate Proposition 'A' concerning Mithras' cosmic set-
ting. The logic is that of astrological 'star-talk and has to do with the system of
planetary 'houses'. 6 Proposition 'C expands on 'A', again by star-talk logic: to the
placement of Mithras is added his orientation there. Proposition 'D', adding the
setting of the auxiliary torch-bearing deities Cautes and Cautopates, is validated
not by star- talk logic but by the logic of terrestrial geography 7

8. In the macrocosm Mithras commands the celestial equator, the great circle
which separates the northern celestial hemisphere from the southern, and the
equinoxes, the points at which the equator intersects the ecliptic, the path of the
Sun's annual journey. If you wish to envisage Mithras enthroned on his
'proper seat' (pikeian kathedran), imagine him at the spring equinox facing
inwards across the universe to the autumn equinox diametrically opposite. The
ecliptic with the northern signs (Aries, Taurus, etc.) curves upwards to his right;
the southern signs (in reverse order: Pisces, Aquarius, etc.) curve downwards to
his left.

6 For an explication and the necessary emendation to make sense of the text, see Beck 1976£;
1994*: 106-15; 2000: 160-2, with n. 68.

7 The brilliant emendation of the Arethusa edition which restores the torchbearers to the text is
generally accepted.

108 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

9. This macrocosmic setting is replicated in the microcosm of the mithraeum
(Figs. 2 and 3) by siting the image of the tauroctonous Mithras in sculpture in the
cult-niche or in fresco on the end wall. From there Mithras commands the aisle
extending before him towards the entrance. The cult-niche is thus the spring
equinox, the entrance the autumn equinox, and the aisle is the diameter of the
universe between those two points. Now imagine this aisle/diameter opened up
vertically into a hoop. Its top above the ceiling is the north celestial pole, its
bottom below the floor is the south celestial pole; the hoop itself is the equinoc-
tial colure, the great circle of the celestial sphere which passes through both poles
and both equinoxes. The longitudinal section of the mithraeum is thus the plane
of the equinoctial colure.

10. At Sette Sfere, the most cosmologically garrulous of all extant mithraea,
the mosaic images of the signs of the zodiac set on the side-benches make this
setting of Mithras explicit. Along the bench to the right of Mithras run the
northern signs from Aries (nearest to Mithras) to Virgo (farthest from Mithras);
along the bench to his left run the southern signs from Libra next to the entrance
and opposite Virgo back to Pisces opposite Aries and next to the Mithras in the
cult-niche. Thus the cult-niche 'is' the vernal equinox because it lies on the
Pisces— Aries cusp which is the vernal equinox by definition; and the mithraeum's
entrance 'is' the autumn equinox because it lies on the Virgo-Libra cusp which is
the autumn equinox by definition.

1 1 . The side-benches represent and so 'are' the ecliptic/zodiac. But they also
represent and so 'are' the celestial equator. This is the sort of paradox which the
imagining mind takes in its stride, the logician despairs of, and the historian of
religion is left to explicate. Fortunately, the cognitive approach, introduced in the
preceding chapter, can be of assistance.

11.1. Let us take the equatorial 'meaning' first. If the longitudinal section of
the mithraeum is the plane of the equinoctial colure (see above, para. 9), then the
plan of the mithraeum ('plan' in the usual sense of 'floor plan') must be the plane
of the celestial equator, for that is the horizontal plane which is at right angles to
the plane of the equinoctial colure. It follows that the side-benches, construed as
two semicircles joined together at the cult-niche and the entrance, must repre-
sent — and 'be' — the celestial equator. And so they are.

1 1.2. How then can they also represent, as they must, the ecliptic/zodiac? By
imagination and by a different train of inference. Initiates on the bench to the right
of Mithras know that their bench, qua the ecliptic/zodiac from the spring equinox
to the autumn equinox, is 'higher' and more 'northerly' than the opposite bench to
the left of Mithras which represents the other half of the ecliptic/zodiac from the
autumn equinox back again to the spring equinox. This 'knowing' is not prep-
ositional knowledge, and it requires no great feat of intellectual discernment.
Rather, it is apprehended subliminally, perhaps after some initial instruction,
as an entailment of the equations 'universe = cave = mithraeum' and 'celestial
north = up/above/higher, celestial south = down/below/lower'. Intending it so

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 109

makes it so. The attuned initiate on the 'northern' bench is aware that he is
'higher' — but only in terms of cosmic location — than his colleague on the
'southern' bench. This awareness could be brought to conscious knowledge and
formulated on star-talk logic as the true proposition: 'I am now to the north of/
higher than my colleague opposite.'

1 1.3. The apparent contradiction, that the benches are both the equator and
the ecliptic, is easily resolved. A symbol, even a complex symbol such as the side-
benches of the mithraeum, can signify two (or more) different things concur-
rently, although at the conscious level the perceiving mind must discriminate
between the two. Thus for the initiate the side-benches can 'mean' both equator
and ecliptic/zodiac at once. That is simply how symbols work: they are multiva-
lent.

1 1.4. This ambiguity is nicely captured in the design of the stucco ceiling of
the Ponza mithraeum (Vermaseren 1974; Beck 1976a;, 1978). The ceiling
represents the northern celestial hemisphere, for within the ring of the twelve
signs of the zodiac are shown two bears, a mother and her cub, which obviously
signify the two polar constellations Ursa Major and Minor (Vermaseren 1974:
17-26; Beck 1978: 1 16-35). 8 The pole itself is marked with an indentation on
the body of Ursa Major. Since this spot is at the centre of the zodiac ring, it ought
in strict logic to signify the pole of the ecliptic. But the pole signified by the Bears
in the popular imagination is not the pole of the ecliptic but the north celestial
pole around which the universe appears to revolve. So in two very different ways
the marked centre concurrently signifies both of the poles. We do not have to
choose between them — nor did the original users of the mithraeum. We do not
even have to suppose that the designer was conscious of the two options or that
any of the initiates there ever thought about them or discussed them explicitly
One cannot even appeal to precise astronomical placement, for the designer has
put his central marker neither at the pole of the ecliptic nor at the north celestial
pole of that era (see Beck 1976a: 8, fig. 2; cf. 2, fig. 1).

12. We have spoken of north and south, and have deduced that one side of the
mithraeum is more 'northerly' than the other. What can we now say about east
and west in the context of the mithraeum?

12.1. Now the universe, of which the mithraeum is an image, has a northern
hemisphere and a southern hemisphere, a north pole and a south pole. The line
connecting the two poles is of course the axis on which the universe turns (or
appears to turn, from the modern point of view). This axis is represented in the
mithraeum by a notional vertical line intersecting the floor plan at the longitu-
dinal and latitudinal midpoint of the central aisle (see Fig. 3). 9 Where this line

8 The ring which separates the Bears from the zodiac is occupied, for a full semicircle, by a large
writhing snake. Though its primary intent is other (Beck 1976^: 9-13; 1978), it also signifies both
of the serpentine constellations in the northern hemisphere, Draco and Serpens (ibid. 7—9).

9 This orientation (north up, south down) supersedes that in my previous study (Beck 2000:
158—63). See below, sect. 5.

110 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

pierces the ceiling lies the north celestial pole. Equidistant downwards from the
floor of the mithraeum lies the invisible south celestial pole.

12.3. This point at the centre of the mithraeum represents, and so 'is', the
earth. Stand at this point and you will have aligned yourself with the axis of
the universe. Now spin in a counterclockwise direction to your left and you will
be replicating the rotation of the earth. But the earth for the ancients (except the
Aristarchan minority) did not rotate; it was stationary and the entire universe
revolved around it. So instead you must imagine the entire mithraeum revolving
around you in a clockwise direction. That this is the proper direction you may
verify by reference to the actual universe: step outside and you will see the Sun (or
the Moon or the planets or the stars) moving clockwise from your left to your
right — westward.

12.4. So there you have it. From the centre of the mithraeum motion
clockwise or to the right is motion to the west, motion counterclockwise or to
the left is motion to the east (see Figs. 2 and 3). Now go to the mithraeum's
entrance, where you are no longer on earth but at a specific point in the heavens,
the autumn equinox, and move (or sweep your gaze) around the mithraeum. If
you first turn to your left and move clockwise up the 'northern' aisle, across, and
back down the 'southern' aisle, you are moving westwards; if you first turn to your
right and move counterclockwise up the 'southern' aisle, across, and back down
the 'northern' aisle, you are moving eastwards.

12.5. In the microcosm of the mithraeum east and west are directions, not
destinations or points of departure or places. To nowhere in the mithraeum can
you point and say, 'that's the east' or 'that's the west'. This is not a paradox: it is
merely the necessary entailment in star-talk of a rotating sphere: two poles and a
direction of rotation, not four cardinal points.

13. It follows that trying to correlate the cosmic orientation of the
mithraeum, whether the ideal mithraeum or its actual exemplars, with terrestrial
north, south, east, and west is a pointless endeavour — pointless because the
universe and a place on the earth's surface are incommensurable. The terms
'north/northern' and 'south/southern' applied to the benches or sides of mithraea
refer here solely to the unvarying symbolic north and south, not to the actual
terrestrial orientation of particular mithraea.

14. While one cannot indicate an eastern or western 'part' of the mithraeum,
it should be clear from the preceding paragraphs that one can indicate a 'north'
and a 'south'. The mithraeum itself, envisaged as a hemispherical volume of
space, represents the northern celestial hemisphere, everything, that is, above
(= to the north of) the plane of the celestial equator represented by the
mithraeum's side-benches. Alternatively, when the benches are construed as the
ecliptic the mithraeum is the hemisphere to the north of the plane of the ecliptic
(and its zenith is the north pole of the ecliptic).

14.1. Corresponding to the northern hemisphere (in either sense) is a south-
ern hemisphere. In the microcosm this southern hemisphere is purely notional: it

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 111

is the hemispherical volume of terrestrial space beneath the floor/benches of the
mithraeum, complementary to the upper hemisphere.

1 5 . The side-benches in 'virtually all excavated mithraea' (Gordon 1 976a: 132)
are pierced at the midpoint by a pair of niches facing each other. These niches
represent, and so are, the solstices. On the northern' bench to Mithras' right
(= the zodiac/ecliptic from Aries to Virgo) the niche represents and so is the
summer solstice in or at the start of Cancer. On the 'southern' bench to Mithras'
left (— the zodiac/ecliptic from Libra to Pisces) the niche represents and so is the
winter solstice in or at the start of Capricorn. The summer solstice is of course the
most northerly point in the ecliptic, the winter solstice the most southerly.
Through the northern/summer solstice souls descend into mortality, through
the southern/winter solstice they ascend back into immortality. From an earthly
perspective the summer solstice is the way in, the winter solstice the way out. These
cosmological 'facts' are explored by Porphyry at some length in De antro 20-3 1 .

15.1. The identities of the mid-bench niches are most explicit at Sette Sfere,
where the mosaic image of Cancer is close to the 'northern' niche and the image
of Capricorn to the 'southern' niche. At the Vulci mithraeum too (Sgubini
Moretti 1979) the solstitial identities of the niches are clear. The benches are
carried on arches, three each side of the niches, which are themselves shallower
indentations in the central supports (i.e. between the third and fourth arch on
each side). The three arches on either side of the niches are the three signs of the
zodiac on either side of the solstices. At the Dura mithraeum (phase 3, 240-56
Ce) one of the columns along the front of the 'northern' bench is obligingly
labelled eisodos/exodos (V66, graffito 'in minute letters'). One would be ill-advised
to attempt literal entry or egress since there is no physical doorway there — and
never was. Clearly this is a soul-gate, and its function is ritual or psychagogic. On
the wall on the same side in the Capua mithraeum, approximately above the
mid-bench niche representing the gate of entry of souls, is affixed a relief of
Cupid and Psyche (VI 86). Whether the relief was actually commissioned for the
mithraeum or opportunistically recycled there, it is an unusual instance of an
exoteric composition in this esoteric setting. In context it speaks of the Soul
conducted into the world by Love.

15.2. Just as the longitudinal section of the mithraeum bisects the universe at
the equinoctial colure, so the cross (latitudinal) section bisects the universe at the
solstitial colure, the great circle which joins the solstices to the poles. The
latitudinal diameter linking the niches is the route of souls, the longitudinal
diameter linking the tauroctonous Mithras in the cult-niche to the mithraeum's
entrance is the line of balance, control, equilibrium, of Mithras mesites, the god
'in the middle'. 10

10 This epithet fot Mithras is taken from Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 46, where 'in the middle' is
intended in the very different sense of intermediate between the good Horomazes and the evil
Areimanios.

112 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

16. The star-talk logic of De antro 24 requires that Cautopates, the Mithraic
torchbearer with the lowered torch, be associated in the mithraeum with the
northern bench, the summer solstice, and genesis; and that Cautes, the torch-
bearer with the raised torch, be associated with the southern bench, the winter
solstice, and apogenesis. This pair of associations is confirmed by the actual siting
of images of the torchbearers in mithraea where they are represented at or on the
bench ends nearest the entrance, as they are at Sette Sfere. Invariably Cautopates is
to the left as you enter (to the right of the tauroctonous Mithras), which links him
to the celestial north, to the summer solstice, and to genesis; Cautes is to the right
as you enter (to the left of the tauroctonous Mithras), which links him to the
celestial south, to the winter solstice, and to apogenesis (Gordon 1976a: 127).

(17. For hermeneutic reasons I postpone this paragraph on the place of the
planets in the 'blueprint' until section 4 of this chapter.)

3. TO REPRESENT IS TO BE

This then is the blueprint for the mithraeum as an image of the universe.
A structure designed to these specifications, if properly used by the proper
people, can realize the mystery of the soul's descent and entry into mortality
and its exit and ascent back up again to immortality.

In his important study of sacred space — or place' as he preferred — Jonathan
Z. Smith (1987: 96-103) drew attention to the watershed in Reformation
thought which divorced in the ritual of the eucharist the symbol from the
thing symbolized, the bread from the Body, the wine from the Blood. Deliber-
ately selecting a scholar from outside the Western tradition, Smith quotes J. P.
Singh Uberoi on the genesis of this 'crucial distinction' so necessary to the genesis
of the modern 'western world view' (Smith 1987: 99; Uberoi 1978: 25):

Zwingli insisted that in the utterance 'This is my body' (Hoc est corpus meurri) the
existential word 'is' (est) was to be understood, not in a real, literal and corporeal sense,
but only in a symbolical, historical or social sense (significat, symbolum est or figura
est) .... Zwingli had discovered or invented the modern concept of time in which every
event was either spiritual and mental or corporeal and material but no event was or could
be both at once. . . . Spirit, word and sign had finally parted company for man at Marburg
in 1 529; and myth or ritual . . . was no longer literally and symbolically true. (Emphasis in
original)

Smith himself speaks of 'a major revolution in thought' (1987: 100): 'ritual is not
"real"; rather, it is a matter of "signification" for Zwingli, or of "metonomy" for
Theodore Beza. A wedge was decisively driven between symbol and reality; there
was no necessary connection between them.'

The Mithraic 'cave' pre-dates this revolution by a millennium-and-a-half.
Actually, it was developed both as structure and as concept at the same time as

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 113

that Christian group which came to prevail historically was developing the cult
meal into a sacramental ritual within the same Graeco-Roman cultural milieu. ' :
If we are to understand the mithraeum or, more to the point, to understand
the initiate's apprehension of his mithraeum, we have to withdraw that
wedge . . . between symbol and reality' and reseal the gap. We have to co-imagine
with the initiate that in representing the universe the mithraeum is the universe;
the authorized microcosm is the macrocosm.

We are now in a position once and for all to dispose of that misconstruction of
Porphyry, De antro 6 which explicates the mystery of the soul's descent and return
as doctrine taught in the mithraeum functioning as teaching aid (above, Ch. 4,
sects. 1-3). No, the descent and return of souls actually 'takes place' (in J. Z.
Smith's sense) there because 'there' is the universe by virtue of being a valid
representation of the universe.

4. THE BLUEPRINT CONTINUED: THE PLANETS

Let us join the initiates on their benches. We are in heaven, from where we come
and to which we return, on the periphery in the circle of signs. Above us is the
north of the universe, below us is the south. Those of us to the right of Mithras
are in the northern signs; we are 'above' or 'higher' than our colleagues in the
southern signs to Mithras' left.

Now look inwards to the point where the equinoctial line down the centre of
the aisle intersects the solstitial line linking the mid-bench niches. Vertically
through that point, from the roof of the 'cave' to the floor and deep into the
ground below, runs the axis of the universe. We can, if we wish, imagine ourselves
turning with that axis, but of course we detect no change of spatial relationship
between ourselves and our colleagues on either side of us and opposite, for none
has in fact occurred.

The world of change, our earth, where simultaneously we still are, is the merest
point. Our view of earth is that of Scipio in the 'Dream' which bears his name
(Somnium Scipionis) at the close of Cicero's De republica: 'From here the earth
appeared so small that I was ashamed of our empire which is, so to speak, but a
point on its surface' (3.7, trans. Stahl). Or, expressed mathematically, as Ptolemy
demonstrated {Almagest 1.6), 'the earth has the ratio of a point to the heavens'. 12

(The next paragraphs belong with and complete the 'blueprint' of the
mithraeum in section 2, above. For hermeneutic reasons we postponed them
until this point in the chapter.)

11 On the parallel development of the sacramental mentality see Beck 2000: 176—8.

12 The infinitesimally small size of the earth's globe was an astronomical commonplace. See
Macrobius, Comm. in Somn. 1.16.8—13 with Stahl 1952: 154, n. 6.

114 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

17. The space between the peripheral benches and the dimensionless centre,
between the ultimate heaven and the earth, is occupied by the seven planetary
spheres. This is made explicit at the Sette Sfere mithraeum, as the name indicates,
where the planetary spheres are represented by outlines of seven arches set in
mosaic up the aisle, one above another, from the entrance towards the cult-niche.
The arciform representation of the seven spheres is in all likelihood determined
by the perception of the planetary spheres as gates through which the soul must
pass, both descending from heaven to earth and ascending again from earth to
heaven. As we saw in the preceding chapter (sect. 8), passage through the
planetary gates was intimated in the Mithraic mysteries by the 'symbol' of the
klimax heptapylos, the 'seven-gated ladder' (Origen, Contra Celsum 6.22). It is
generally accepted that the floor mosaic of the seven-arched arcade at another
Ostian mithraeum, V287-93, has the same significance; hence its modern name,
'the Mithraeum of the Seven Gates' (Sette Porte). The series of mosaic panels up
the aisle of the Felicissimus mithraeum (V299, also in Ostia) would likewise
intimate the succession of planetary gates, for each panel contains the symbol of a
planet. However, as the other symbols in the panels indicate, the primary sign-
ificance is passage through the grades of initiation from Raven up to Father, for
the sequence is that of the grade hierarchy and the planetary symbols follow that
order rather than the classic planetary order of relative distance from earth. 13

17.1. At Sette Sfere individual mosaic images of six of the planetary gods are
also set, three each side, on the front of the side-benches. (The seventh is of
course the Sun represented by Sol Mithras in the cult-niche.) Whatever the
precise significance of their arrangement at Sette Sfere (Jupiter, Mercury, Luna
on the 'northern' bench to the right of Mithras; Saturn, Venus, Mars on the
'southern' bench to the left of Mithras), setting their images at certain points on
the benches necessarily indicates that each is at a particular location or at least in
one semicircle of the zodiac rather than the other (Beck 1979). Now the motions
of the planets define time. Without them there is no time. In particular the Sun
defines the day and the year, the Moon the month. But as the Timaeus declares
(39c5-d7), the other five also have their proper periods, and the seven together
define what was to become known as the Great Year by their simultaneous return
to their points of departure. Thus what Sette Sfere 'says' at the most general level
is that 'Time' and temporal difference exist and with them a past and a future
defined by a moving 'now'. These are features not only of our sublunary world
but also of the world of the seven planets.

17.1.1. The design of the mithraeum at Vulci (Sgubini Moretti 1979) offers a
more elegant and versatile way of representing Time and Change by planetary
position. As we saw above (sect. 2, para. 15.1), the benches are carried on low
arches, six each side, with a mid-bench 'solstitial' niche dividing each set of six
into two triads. The triads, I propose, represent the four quadrants of the zodiac:

13 On all these matters see Beck 1988, passim.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 115

starting on the right of Mithras in the cult-niche and proceeding counterclock-
wise:

(1) from spring equinox — Aries, Taurus, Gemini

(2) from summer solstice — Cancer, Leo, Virgo

(3) from autumn equinox — Libra, Scorpius, Sagittarius

(4) from winter solstice — Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces

Into these 'signiferous' arches could be set images of the seven planets in the form
of statuettes of their deities. The mithraeum could thus demonstrate any time,
past, present, or future, including the changing now', by moving the markers
from sign to sign as appropriate.

17.2. Among the planets the Sun, whether as Sol Mithras or as Sol the
companion of Mithras, is privileged in these solar mysteries. In addition to the
sign he occupies in any particular month, his contingent place in the world of
change, he possesses also his 'proper seat at the equinoxes' represented by his
image in the cult-niche (above, sect 2., para. 8). The cult-niche represents the
spring equinox on the cusp of Pisces and Aries. This then is his place in
the Platonic higher world, the world of invariance which is and does not become,
the world of Eternity. Wherever else he is, he is always there.

5. AN IMPROVED RECONSTRUCTION

Readers familiar with my previous descriptions of the mithraeum may have
noticed a difference in the description presented here. Before I explain the
alteration, please bear in mind that what I call the 'blueprint' of the mithraeum
is not an actual plan existing in the external world about which one can be right
or wrong empirically. I am not, then, correcting a mistake. Rather, I am
modifying my reconstruction of how the initiates represented to themselves
and so validated the esoteric 'fact': 'our "cave" is an image of the universe for
the descent and ascent of souls.'

Certainly reconstructions can be wrong if they are false to the data from actual
excavated mithraea on what Porphyry (De antra 6) calls the 'proportionate
arrangement of the symbols'. But representations which conform to the data
are another matter, and likewise one's reconstructions of those representations.
What I now offer is a better — not truer — reconstruction: better because simpler,
more in tune with ancient imagining, and with a greater regard for symbolic
multivalence.

The mithraeum as I have just described it represents the universe as a sphere
rotating on an axis whose poles 'are' (are represented by) the zenith of the ceiling
and the subterranean nadir (para. 12.1). In earlier studies (Beck 1994a; 2000:
160-3), starting from the (true) premise that the side-bench to Mithras' right
is 'northern' and the side-bench to his left 'southern', I had represented the

116 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

cosmic axis as the transverse line from one side of the mithraeum to the other. In
that representation the equatorial cross-section of the cosmos turns in daily
revolution like a Ferris wheel in the vertical plane. In my newly postulated
representation the same cross-section turns in the horizontal plane like a
merry-go-round.

Why is the new reconstruction an improvement on the old? The answer is that
the newly postulated representation conforms better to representations of the
universe which were actually made in classical antiquity and which picture the
equatorial and/or ecliptic cross-sections as discs rotating in the horizontal plane.
First, in the 'Myth of Er' at the close of the Republic Plato uses the metaphor of a
whorl on a drop spindle; and Nigidius Figulus is reported by Augustine {City of
God 5.3) to have used a potter's wheel to demonstrate the speed with which
points on the sphere of the fixed stars, specifically on the zodiac, revolve.
Secondly, star-talk logic which correlates celestial north with 'up/above' and
south with 'down/below' implies that any circle rotating eastward or westward
does so in the horizontal plane. Thirdly, there is an exact precedent, in Plato's
whorl on the 'Spindle of Necessity', for the representation of universal and
planetary motion in the same plane. The Mithraists, I proposed (sect. 2, para.
11), represented their side-benches both as equator and as ecliptic/zodiac.
Symbolic multivalence allowed them in effect to suppress the obliquity of the
ecliptic, to return to the model of the spindle's whorl from Plato's later and more
astronomically sophisticated model {Timaeus 36b6-d7) of the two strips of
cosmic soul-stuff joined front and back in a chi-ctoss.

6. SYMBOLS, REPRESENTATIONS, AND STAR-TALK

In my description of the mithraeum's 'blueprint' I have spoken both of 'symbols'
and of 'representations'. That is to say, I have treated the mithraeum as a complex
of symbols within the larger symbol system that carried, and in a sense was, the
Mithraic mysteries; and I have also treated the mithraeum as the public repre-
sentation generated from and in turn generating the initiates' mental represen-
tations of the universe as 'cave'. The symbolic approach I laid out in Chapter 5,
the cognitive/representational in Chapter 6.

You will also have noticed my appeal to 'star-talk as the logic which holds
together the symbol complex of the mithraeum as an integrated whole and
likewise relates the mental and public representations of the parts of the
mithraeum to the representation of the whole. In starting to apply 'star-talk'
arguments before explaining the concept at a more theoretical and general level
I am reversing the order of presentation. Star- talk as a heuristic and hermeneutic
device is my invention, so I cannot explain it in advance as a ready-made and
known method. Let this brief section serve then as an interim definition, on
which I shall expand in the chapter which follows.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 117

Perhaps the most important point to make at this stage is that because the
mental representations of the mithraeum and their physical instantiations in
actual mithraea follow the logic of 'star-talk', we can fine-tune our reconstruction
of those representations to an extent that would be impossible if the ideal
mithraeum and the actual mithraeum were mere congeries of representations
and symbols. There is nothing esoteric about 'star-talk; it is a public language
which a modern scholar — or layperson for that matter — can 'hear' and appre-
hend quite as well as could an ancient initiate.

7. THE VIEW FROM THE BENCHES: ANALOGIES OF
WORLD VIEW AND ETHOS TO 'SCIPIO'S DREAM'

I have mentioned already (above, sect. 4) that the initiate's view of the world from
his bench corresponds to that of Scipio in the 'Dream' at the close of Cicero's De
republica. Put less cautiously but more precisely, the initiates' view of the universe
is Scipio's view, for the two occupy the same vantage point, the same celestial
belvedere. What differs is how each of them got there. 'Scipio' (that is, Cicero's
construction of Scipio) got there in a 'dream', a dream which is actually Cicero's
literary fantasy. The Mithraic initiate got there by apprehending his mithraeum
as an image of the universe and his position on the bench as a particular place on
the zodiacal circumference.

Please notice what I am not postulating. I am not postulating a direct
genealogical link. I do not claim that Mithraism's founder(s) had read 'Scipio's
dream' and encoded it in the mithraeum's blueprint. Yes, there is a common
ancestor, but that ancestor is a certain mental representation of the universe, a
complex representation constructed of simpler representations according to strict
star-talk logic. In Sperberian terms (1996), 'Scipio's dream' and the mithraeum
belong to the same 'epidemic' of cosmological representations.

Notice too how irrelevant has become that old objection based on the
dichotomy between antiquity's educated elite (the 'wise') and the rude masses
(the 'vulgar'). By proper apprehension of his 'cave' the rank-and-file Mithraist
was as capable of 'getting it' as the most cultured reader of 'Scipio's dream'.

And so, with confidence that it reflects the view of the cosmos that was to
become Mithraism's too, I reproduce the relevant portions of 'Scipio's dream'
(trans. Stahl 1952). Interestingly, the text reflects not only Mithraism's 'world
view' (how things really are) but also its 'ethos' (how one should comport oneself
in the context of how things really are). This earth, Scipio is told, is not our final
home: it is an arena where we must serve honourably, faithfully, and piously in
the station to which each of us is called. To say that a Mithraic Father could not
have put it better is neither to evoke a fortunate coincidence nor to hint at the
contents of a Mithraist's library. Rather it is to confirm a prediction that within

118 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

the same larger epidemic of representations world view and ethos will tend to run
in tandem. 14

(3.4) 15 'Men were created with the understanding that they were to look after that sphere
called Earth, which you see in the middle of the temple. Minds were given to them out of
the eternal fires you call fixed stars and planets, those spherical solids which, quickened
with divine minds, journey through their circuits and orbits with amazing speed. (5)
Wherefore, Scipio, you and all other dutiful (pits) men must keep your souls in the
custody of your bodies and must not leave this life of men except at the command of that
One who gave it to you, that you may not appear to have deserted the office (munus)
assigned to you. . . . But cherish justice and your obligations to duty (pietatem) ... (6) This
sort of life is your passport (via) into the sky, to a union with those who have finished their
lives on earth and who, upon being released from their bodies, inhabit that place at which
you are now looking' (it was a circle of surpassing brilliance gleaming out amid the
blazing stars), 'which takes its name, the Milky Way, from the Greek word'.

(7) As I looked out from this spot, everything appeared splendid and wonderful. Some
stars were visible which we never see from this region, and all were of a magnitude far
greater than we had imagined. Of these the smallest was the one farthest from the sky and
nearest the earth, which shone forth with borrowed light [i.e. the Moon]. And, indeed,
the starry spheres easily surpassed the earth in size. From here the earth appeared so small
that I was ashamed of our empire which is, so to speak, but a point on its surface.

(4.1) As I gazed rather intently at the earth my grandfather said: 'How long will your
thoughts continue to dwell upon the earth? Do you not behold the regions (templd) to
which you have come? The whole universe is comprised of nine circles, or rather spheres.
The outermost of these is the celestial sphere, embracing all the rest, itself the supreme
god (summus deus), confining and containing all the other spheres. In it are fixed the
eternally revolving movements of the stars. (2) Beneath it are the seven underlying
spheres, which revolve in an opposite direction to that of the celestial sphere. One of
these spheres belongs to that planet which on earth we call Saturn. Below it is that
brilliant orb, propitious and helpful to the human race, called Jupiter. Next comes the
ruddy one, which you call Mars, dreaded on earth. Next and occupying the middle
region, comes the sun, leader, chief, and regulator of the other lights (dux et princeps et
moderator luminum reliquorum) , mind and moderator of the universe (mens mundi et
tempemtio), of such magnitude that it fills all with its radiance. The sun's companions, so
to speak, each in its own sphere, follow — the one Venus, the other Mercury — and in the
lowest sphere the moon, kindled by the rays of the sun, revolves. (3) Below the moon all is
mortal and transitory (nil est nisi mortale et caducum), with the exception of the souls
bestowed upon the human race by the benevolence of the gods. Above the moon all things
are eternal. Now in the center, the ninth of the spheres, is the earth, never moving and at
the bottom. Towards it all bodies gravitate by their own inclination.

14 If there is a divergence it is that Mithraism, perhaps as a legacy from Mazdaism, retains a more
positive view of Earth and life on Earth. There is no hint in Mithraism that the earthly creation is
intrinsically anything but good, while in 'Scipio's dream' Earth, although not in itself evil, is no more
than an arena for fighting the good fight.

15 The speaker at this point in the dream is Scipio's adoptive grandfather, P. Cornelius Scipio
Africanus the Elder. The dreamer and narrator is P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Younger.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 119

8. THE CHAMULA CHURCH

It is time to return to our cultural and religious comparator, the Chamulas of the
Chiapas highlands in Mexico. In Chapter 5 we saw how the world view and ethos
of the Chamulas are expressed in a string of opposed pairs, one term of which is
privileged over the other (see table).

Superior

Inferior

Sun

Moon

on/to the right

on/to the left

counterclockwise

clockwise

east and north

west and south

up /high

down /low

hot/fiery

cold/earthy

male

female

How are these cosmological principles and priorities instantiated in the
Chamula church, in their 'Place' par excellence''.

First, as we did for the mithraeum, we must establish the privileged stance,
relative to which things are 'on/ to the right' or 'on/to the left'. Gary Gossen
(1979: 125) provides the answer: things are on/to the right or left 'from the point
of view of the patron saint San Juan, who stands above the altar in the center of
the east end of the church'.

As we pursue the obvious analogies with the 'blueprint' of the mithraeum, in
which the tauroctonous Mithras in the cult-niche has north to his right and south
to his left, we must bear in mind that the logic of orientation in the Chamula
church is terrestrial, not celestial (as in the mithraeum). The terms 'north',
'south', 'east', and 'west' do not refer to the poles and directions of motion on a
rotating sphere. Instead they revert to their usual terrestrial senses of the four
cardinal points. Thus the Chamula church has an east end and a west end, a
north side and a south side. Following the traditional Christian norm, the
sanctuary with the image of S. Juan is in the east end and the entrance in the
west end.

Thus, (1) S. Juan in the Chamula church is in the geographical east, having
geographical north to his right and geographical south to his left, while (2) in the
mithraeum the tauroctonous Mithras at the spring equinox has the northern
signs and the northern (summer) solstice to his right and the southern signs and
the southern (winter) solstice to his left.

S. Juan in the east end of the Chamula church is the microcosmic equivalent of
the Sun rising in the east in the Chamula macrocosm, a 'universe' which we saw is
limited to Chamula territory, its immediate surroundings, the sky above, and the

120 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

earth beneath. In contrast the Mithraic universe is so vast that the globe of earth is
a mere point at its centre. This immensity is captured in the microcosm of the
mithraeum which, by definition, cannot be a place on earth having an east and a
west, a north and a south. What we have been calling the privileged stance' is
accordingly one and the same in the macrocosm and in the microcosm of the
mithraeum: the 'proper seat' of Mithras at the (spring) equinox. In the macro-
cosm he is 'really' there; in the microcosm he is there as the tauroctonous god in
the cult-niche.

In what way is the privileging of the north/right side of the Chamula church
over the south/left side manifested? Primarily by the association of the north side
with the male and the south side with the female. We can do no better than quote
Gossen(1979: 125 and fig. 4):

The female saints reside on the left side (south) of the church from the point of view of
the patron saint San Juan, who stands above the altar in the center of the east end of the
church. While there are no female saints on the 'male (north) side', there are a few
unimportant male saints on the 'female (south) side'. I believe that it is also significant
that an oil painting of Hell (a very dark one which has never been cleaned), the cross of
the dead Christ, and the baptistery are all found in the 'most negative', 'female' part of the
church, the southwestern corner. These objects are negative within the symbolic scheme.
The opposite (northeastern) corner of the church is the 'most positive', 'most masculine'
part of the church. This point lies to the patron saint's immediate right. It is here that the
major male saints and images of Christ (the sun) line the north and east walls.

The same point is made by motion as by location (ibid. 125 and fig. 5):

When processions take place at the climax of some major fiestas in honor of male saints,
the male saints march out of the church and around the atrium to the right (counter-
clockwise). Female saints, on the other hand, march out to the left (clockwise) around the
atrium, meet at the half-way point (the west entrance to the atrium) and bow to each of
the male saints in sequence. The female saints then reverse their direction of motion and
line up behind the last male saint. They march around the last 180 degrees of the circuit
behind the male saints, but this time in counterclockwise direction, which is associated
with the male principle. The female saints thus 'capitulate' symbolically to the male
principle and follow the male saints as the moon follows the sun and Chamula women
follow their husbands.

9. OTHER 'IMAGES OF THE UNIVERSE' IN ANTIQUITY:

(I) THE PANTHEON, NERO'S DOMUS AUREA, VARRO'S

AVIARY, THE CIRCUS

The Mithraists' invention of an 'image of the universe' was far from unique in the
ancient world. We have already noticed (sect. 2, above) how Cassius Dio
(53.27.2) thought that the Pantheon was domed 'so as to resemble {proseoiken)

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 121

the heavens'. Similarly, a dining-room in Nero's Domus Aurea, so Suetonius says
(Nero 31.2), was designed 'to revolve continuously day and night as a proxy for
the universe (vice mundoY . Presumably it was the dome of the ceiling that
revolved, and it did so once every twenty-four hours, bringing the images of
the stars and constellations on to the meridian in synchronization with their
macrocosmic referents (Beck 2000: 167, n. 96). The orientation is essentially
that of the mithraeum: north' is up, 'south' is down, 'westward' is the clockwise
direction of the dome's rotation (to the interior observer's right), and 'eastward' is
the opposite direction of motion. This proxy universe was an engineering
triumph, requiring the emperor's resources to realize. However, the mithraeum,
whose exemplars started coming into being a few decades later, is conceptually
the more elegant and sophisticated, and it was achievable at a fraction of the cost.
It had to be. For while Nero's dining-room was about Nero as a cosmocrat on
earth, 16 the mithraeum had the more demanding though less vainglorious
function of ferrying ordinary initiates in a mystery from heaven to earth and
back again.

The shift of the vantage point, the belvedere, from earth (the emperor and his
guests at the centre) to heaven (the initiates on their side-benches on the
periphery) validates the affordable, no-moving-parts Mithraic model. To those
on the periphery in the changeless heavens twenty-four-hour rotation with its
alternation of day and night is unnoticed, for nothing up there changes in
relation to anything else. Paradoxically, only for us mortals is so-called 'universal
motion' relevant. 17 In a mithraeum a revolving dome, even if achievable, would
not have been an improvement. It would have been a mistake.

The mithraeum is of course also a dining-room, both in the literal sense of a
place designed for actual feasting and good-fellowship and in the sacramental
sense of a place designed for the replication of the feast of Mithras and Sol
following the former's sacrifice of the bull. To the mithraeum and Nero's dining-
room we may add a third combination of cosmic model cum feasting-place from
the preceding century, Varro's ingenious aviary near Casinum, which he describes
in his De re rustica (3. 8-17). 18 The aviary was designed in a set of concentric
rings with the dining-room at the centre in the form of an open, columned
rotunda. The rings collectively intimate the concentric celestial spheres, although
individually they relate rather to the terrestrial elements (earth, water, air), not to
particular celestial bodies. The dining-room/rotunda was set on a circular island
surrounded by a circular pond, well stocked with waterfowl and fish, with access
across a single bridge. Around the pond was a circular portico. At the outer ring
of columns, in place of a wall, was a net made of gut, and similarly a fowling net

16 On the Domus Aurea as the epitome of this project, see L'Orange 1942; Stietlin 1986: 40—7.

17 In the next chaptet, on 'star-talk', we shall look at Plotinus' treatment of this point-of-view
problem. In classical antiquity it was a serious philosophical question, given the construction of the
celestial bodies as rational self-conscious beings capable of communication.

18 On Varro's aviary as an exemplar of the self-promoting cosmic model see Stierlin 1986: 141—7.

122 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

was suspended around the inner ring, thus forming a secure aviary in which the
birds could be viewed against the natural background of the tree trunks and
countryside beyond.

This cosmic model, like Nero's, had its moving parts. First, the table was what
we would call a 'dumb waiter': it took the form of a rotatable spoked wheel
carrying on its circumference a circular wooden trough two-and-a-half feet wide
and a palm in depth. Secondly, 'inside under the dome, the morning star by day
and the evening star by night move around the base of the hemisphere in such a
way as to indicate the hour' (3.8.17). This effect could be achieved by rotating (by
means of a water-clock drive, if done automatically) a diametrical rod. At each
end of the rod images of the morning star (Lucifer) and the evening star
(Vesperus) would function as pointers, and one would select the appropriate
pointer to 'tell the time' (Lucifer in the day, Vesperus in the night). The twelve
hours of the day and the twelve hours of the night would be painted in a circle on
the inside of the dome, much as the twenty-four 'hours' of 'right ascension' are
shown on a modern star map. 19 The clock would be accurate only at the
equinoxes. At other seasons it would continue to 'tell the time' in equinoctial
hours. 20 However, precision is probably beside the point. The intent of the clock
was not really to 'tell the time' in our sense but to demonstrate Time itself in the
universal order. Thirdly and lastly, 'in the centre of the hemisphere, surrounding
a protruding spindle, is painted the circle of the eight winds, as in the horologium
at Athens which the Kyrrhestian constructed, and a radial pointer projecting
from the spindle to the wind-rose so moves that it touches the wind which
happens to be blowing with the result that you can know it inside' (3.8.17). In
other words, the oscillations of the weather-vane above are transmitted to a
pointer below, indicating to the diners the direction of the wind. 21 Again, the
point is not really to transmit information — the diners would be well aware
which way the wind was blowing since the dining-room was purposefully open to
the breezes — but to show how the actual wind relates to the scheme of the eight
cardinal and intra-cardinal points and so to the idea of Direction itself in the
cosmos. Varro compares his weather-vane to that in the still-standing Tower of
the Winds at Athens, designed not long before by Andronikos of Kyrrhos. 22

19 In a map of the circumpolar regions the hour lines radiate from the pole, just as do the
longitude lines on a map of the terrestrial polar regions.

20 i.e. equal twenty-fourths of a 24-hour day measured from the equinoctial sunrise and sunset,
i.e. 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. in modern time.

21 The three devices rotate around a common vertical axis which represents the axis of universal
revolution. In the material model, the spindle for the wind device is driven from above and the
support of the table from below. It follows that one or other of these axles (probably the latter) must
be hollow in order to accommodate the axle for the hour indicator.

22 The Tower of the Winds and the anaphoric clock which it is now thought to have contained
may also be considered an elaborate 'model of the universe': Noble and Price 1968.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 123

One last feature of Varro's aviary is worth a look. From front to back the aviary
'was constructed in steps like a little bird-theatre with many perches on all the
columns to serve as seating for the birds (gradatim substructum ut theatridion
avium, mutuli crebri in omnibus columnis inpositi, sedilia avium, 3.5.13)'. So who
are the spectators in this theatridion avium and who are the performers? Varro's
description is unambiguous: birds view men, not men birds. Varro's dinner guests
might think themselves bird-watchers, but the reality is otherwise. However,
those who had read their Plato would quickly get the point: the heavens on the
periphery belong to winged souls; the wingless inhabit earth at the centre. Think
now of the Mithraists on their peripheral benches and of the dreaming Scipio
gazing inwards to an insignificant earth.

Among structures with multiple exemplars the circus, that immensely popular
arena for chariot-racing, was explicitly likened to the universe, and although the
extant sources for this are mostly late, 23 there is good reason to suppose that the
simile and its constituent comparisons go back at least to the first century ce
(Wuilleumier 1927). 24 Naturally, the race-course itself is the great cosmic per-
iphery, 'carrying round' the stars and planets. In particular it represents the solar
year, and the seven laps allude to the seven days of the week and to the seven
eponymous planetary gods, while the twelve starting-gates allude to the twelve
months and the twelve signs of the zodiac through which the Sun passes. So we
may properly compare the Mithraists facing each other on the side-benches of
their mithraeum to the spectators at the circus (Mithraists no doubt among
them) facing each other across the long central spina separating the two halves of
the track.

10. OTHER 'IMAGES OF THE UNIVERSE' IN ANTIQUITY:
(II) ORRERIES AND THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM,

THE SUNDIAL

Next we should take a brief look at those 'images of the universe' which were
purpose-built to replicate in miniature the universe's motions and 'periods'.
These are actually 'scale models' of the universe, but it is not space which is 'to
scale', but time. The most like in appearance is the orrery, a type of sphaera so-
called, in which a small earth-globe is suspended in the centre of a much larger
transparent globe representing the sphere of the fixed stars. Between earth and
heaven revolve seven other small globes representing the Moon, the Sun, and the
remaining five planets. The most famous exemplar in antiquity — there cannot
have been many — was that made by Archimedes in the third century bce and
taken to Rome in the spoils from the sack of Syracuse. It was described by Cicero

23 With the exception of Tertullian (late 2nd cent.), the earliest is Cassiodorus (6th cent.).

24 See also Stierlin 1986: 163-70 (cf. 140-1); Lyle 1984.

124 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

(De republica 1.21-2), who also tells of another sphaera of this type which 'our
friend Posidonius recently made' {De natura deorum 2.88). 25

How did it work? By clockwork, is the short answer. The proof of this is the
Antikythera Mechanism, a luni-solar 'calendar computer' (Price 1975: subtitle)
constructed in about 80 bce, recovered from an ancient shipwreck excavated by
sponge-divers in 1900-1, and reconstructed, as far as the extensive corrosion
allowed, by Derek De Solla Price (1975) and A. G. Bromley (1986). The
mechanism consists of a complex train of meshing bronze gear-wheels. Its
function was to transmute an initial impetus, probably the turning of a crank
(the mechanism's primum mobile as it were), via the gear train, into a replication
of the time-defining motions of the Sun and Moon. On a dial on the front of the
mechanism were displayed the progress of the Sun and Moon around the
ecliptic/zodiac and of the Sun through the 365-day Egyptian year, 26 and on
dials in the back the Moon's progress through the synodic month and the Sun's
progress through the twelve lunations of the lunar year.

Archimedes' and Posidonius' orreries were driven by similar gear trains (Price
1975: 55-60), probably less complicated for the Sun and Moon, 27 and for the
other five planets incorporating only mean motion in longitude (for example, the
thirty-year sidereal period of Saturn). 28 Superficially the orreries resembled
antiquity's imagined universe more closely than did the Antikythera Mechanism.
They 'looked like' the universe. But to the Platonic way of thinking, antiquity's
default mode, the Antikythera Mechanism is surely the purer image, for it
dispenses with mere appearance and confines its output to number and propor-
tion, specifically number and proportion instantiated in the luni-solar period
relationships. For example, there is a fundamental period relationship, the
Metonic cycle, 29 well known in ancient astronomy, whereby

19 years = 254 sidereal months = 235 synodic months

25 On Archimedes' orrery see also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 1.63; Ovid, Fasti 6.263—83;
Lactantius, Divine Institutes 2.5.18; Claudian, Carmina minora 51 (68). All these sources are
conveniently set out in translation in Price 1975: 56—7.

26 The Egyptian 'wandering' year is displayed on a slip ring so that it can be recalibrated against
the tropic year which is approximately one-quarter of a day longer.

27 The Antikythera Mechanism had gears for outputs other than the year, the sidereal month, the
synodic month, and the lunar year, but we do not know what those outputs were.

28 The inferior planets (Mercury, Venus) would be kept in lockstep with the Sun. No attempt
would be made to capture and display the retrograde motion of the five planets proper. I suspect that
all seven planets must have been kept in a single plane, i.e. the plane of the ecliptic. To exhibit
latitudinal change (not to mention the draconitic month and the precession of the lunar nodes)
would surely have been beyond the technology of the times, in practice if not in theory. With the
Sun and Moon in the same plane, the orrery would imply an eclipse twice a month. The intent must
have been to demonstrate when an eclipse was possible (Sun and Moon in conjunction or
opposition), not when an eclipse would actually occur.

29 Named after Meton, an Athenian astronomer of the 5th cent. bce.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 125

The Antikythera Mechanism was geared in such a way that nineteen complete
revolutions of the Sun and 254 complete revolutions of the Moon on the dial on
the front would coincide precisely with 235 complete (synodic) revolutions of
the Moon on the lunar dial on the back. Its gear train thus instantiates the
numbers in the formula given above, which a Platonist might tell you is the
intelligible reality behind the relative motions of the visible Sun and the visible
Moon. An orrery must of course also instantiate this ratio so that its model Sun
and Moon can replicate the relative motions of their originals. But the addition
of the little model luminaries is for the purist something of a distraction, a
concession to appearances which, even if they can be replicated precisely, are not
really worth replicating since in the strictest sense they are unintelligible.

The orrery, one must suppose, suppressed universal daily motion. The whole
point of an orrery is to demonstrate planetary motions and their relationships. If
the entire contrivance is spinning in the opposite direction and at a speed more
than twenty-seven times faster than the Moon, the fastest of the planets, the
phenomena of planetary motion will be lost to the viewer. In any case, Cicero's
descriptions make it abundantly clear that the orreries were specifically designed
to demonstrate only planetary motion, and that this was their sole 'output'.
Where universal motion comes into play is as the 'input'. One turn of the crank
produces one day's worth of planetary motion. The gearing should be such that
twenty-seven-and-one-third turns bring the model Moon back to her starting
point and 365 \ turns bring the model Sun back to his. This is how Cicero {De
natura deorum 2.88) describes the orrery of Posidonius: ' ... in which every single
turn produces the same result for the [sc. model] Sun, Moon, and five planets
that is produced in the [sc. actual] heavens every single 24-hour day {cuius
singulae conversiones idem ejficiunt in sole et in luna et in quinque stellis errantibus
quod efficitur in caelo singulis diebus et noctibus).' 30

The intent of the orrery's design as a model universe is stated most succinctly
by Cicero in his Tusculan Disputations (1.63, of Archimedes' exemplar): Archi-
medes achieved the same as that god of Plato's who built the universe so that one
single "turn" would govern motions which are utterly dissimilar in speed {Archi-
medes . . . effecit idem quod Me qui in Timaeo mundum aedificavit Platonis deus, ut
tarditate et celeritate dissimillimos motus una regeret conversio).' Archimedes, in
other words, replicated the Circle of the Different and demonstrated mechanic-
ally that even its apparent 'difference' is the product of a single impetus. No
wonder Archimedes' orrery became a trope for the divine inventiveness of the
human mind, as also for the cosmos as a divinely ordered whole instantiating
reason and number.

The orrery's suppression of universal motion is not for us a trivial point. We
have noted already that for those on the periphery universal motion does not

30 The orrer y was no t designed to replicate 'day' and 'night'. The phrase signifies only a unit of
time, what in Greek would be called the nychthemeron.

126

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

register, because everything there maintains the same spatial relation to every-
thing else. Only by looking inwards at the insignificant pinpoint earth can you
become aware of motion and of change. And why ever, to echo 'Scipio's dream',
would you want to do that, once you have achieved the heavens? The orrery and
the 'Dream' both represent (in our technical sense) the changelessness of the
sphere of the fixed stars as vantage point. They are precedents for the Mithraists'
benches as representations of the same changeless location. I do not claim that
they were consciously claimed as precedents by the Mithraists. Rather we should
think of them as prior representations in the stream of representations of the
cosmos in which we find, a century or so downstream, the mithraeum as 'image
of the universe'.

A more commonplace 'image of the universe' for representing time as 'told' by
the motions of the celestial bodies is the sundial. This device, of which many
exemplars survive from antiquity, of course tells only solar time, of which there
are two measures, the day and the year. A properly calibrated sundial will tell you
both the time of day and the time of year.

Figure 4 is a diagram of a horizontal planar sundial. 31 The straight lines (up
and down on the page) represent the hours either side of noon. The noon line is
of course the local meridian and is so labelled — mesenbria. It runs due north

SOUTH

,€??

EAST

ZYT

CKO

TO^,

/ ICH j j

X~\ \ mep \

00 \

WEST

YAP

i Alf

NORTH

Fig. 4. A horizontal planar sundial from Pompeii (Gibbs 1976: no. 4007)

Redrawn after Gibbs 1976, no. 4007, p. 331.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 127

through the gnomon, the upright pointer which casts the shadow. The Sun,
rising in the east, casts a shadow westward. As the Sun moves round to the south
and then to the west, the tip of the shadow travels eastward, crossing the hour
lines in succession and so 'telling the time'.

Just as the westward progress of the shadow tip tells the time of day, so the
northward and southward progress up and down the hour lines tells the time of
year. Each day the shadow tip passes eastward along a slightly different day curve.
From the summer solstice in July, represented by the southern (upper) margin of
the dial and labelled trop(ikos) ther(inos), to the winter solstice in December,
represented by the northern (lower) margin and labelled trop(ikos) cheim(erinos),
the shadow tip progresses daily northward; from the winter solstice back to the
summer solstice, it progresses southward. The day curves drawn in this exemplar
are thus boundary markers: when the shadow tip crosses them (or reverses
direction at the solstices), the Sun is moving from one sign of the zodiac to the
next. The names of the signs (abbreviated) are displayed in columns to the left
and right. 32 Finally we should note that one of the day curves is not a curve at all.
Uniquely the equinoctial line, labelled isemer(inos), where the sun crosses from
Pisces into Aries and from Virgo into Libra, is straight.

The sundial is a special map for the representation of the Sun's daily and annual
progress as motion across a grid of hour lines for the day and day lines for the year.
It converts Time into Space, or rather into Change of Place. Manifestly, then, the
sundial is a 'cosmic model'. One inscription, from a lost dial (Paris and Delatte
1913: 145-54), 33 calls it precisely that — eikona kosmou, the very term transmitted
by Porphyry to characterize the mithraeum. The inscription of another lost dial
(ibid. 155—6), evidently in the form of a hollow marble hemisphere, the dial form
which most closely resembles the celestial sphere as we view it from earth, 34 calls
the instrument a 'stony cave' (lainon antrori). It seems that Mithraists and
Neoplatonists were not alone in representing the universe as a 'cave'.

Here too the communicative function of the sundial should be mentioned.
The inscription on a recently published sundial (Marengo 1998) records in an
elegiac couplet how 'Thaleia, priestess of the divine Hera set me up, a messenger of
the solar hours to creatures of a day {heliakon horon angelon hemeriois)' '. The
speaking tombstone was of course a long-established convention. But the sundial
speaks with authority of a different order altogether. It is a messenger from the

32 No significance should be attached to the placement of the summer and autumn names on the
right and the winter and spring signs on the left. Interchanging them would make no difference. The
great horologiumlsolarium Augusti in the Campus Martius marked the year by signs of the zodiac up
and down the meridian (Buchner 1982: ills, at 70, 107, 110—11). The scale was large enough to
distinguish individual days by short cross-bars about 28 cm apart in the short excavated stretch.

33 The two epigrams discussed by Paris and Delatte were copied in antiquity and transmitted in
manuscript.

34 A fine example of this type, in which a shaft of sunlight falling through a pierced aperture
replaces a gnomon's shadow (i.e. a positive rather than negative solar proxy), may be seen in
Gagnaire 1999.

128 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

gods, specifically the Sun, to mortals, 35 and its news is not some evanescent
human biography but the very measure of Time, the 'Sun-given hours'. We shall
hear more of and about this 'star-talk' in the next chapter.

In a previous study (Beck 1994a) I compared the horizontal planar sundial
and the mithraeum as 'cosmic models' in some detail, emphasizing that both
structures are instruments for communication between heaven and earth: the
sundial for 'telling time', the mithraeum for symbolic soul-travel to and fro. Here
I wish only to draw out the implications of a single striking similarity.

In both structures the longitudinal axis is an equinoctial line. On the sundial,
the Sun's surrogate, the shadow point, walks this line on two days in the year, the
spring equinox and the autumn equinox. On those two days it is truly 'at
the equinoxes'. And since the equinoxes are the points at which the ecliptic
and the equator intersect, it is also truly 'on the equator'. In the mithraeum, as we
have seen, this equinoctial/equatorial line is represented by the aisle, overseen at
the cult-niche end by the tauroctonous Mithras in his 'proper seat' 'on the
equator' 'at the equinoxes'.

In the system of planetary identities encoded in the grade hierarchy the
surrogate of the Sun is the Heliodromus, the Sun-Runner. Now the Heliodromus
in procession is the subject of the scene represented on Side B of the Mainz ritual
vessel (Horn 1994). In my study of the scene (Beck 2000: 154-67) I interpreted
this 'Procession of the Sun-Runner' as a mimesis of the solar journey intended to
validate the mithraeum as an authentic 'image of the universe' and thus as a
proper and functional venue for the mystery of soul-travel. Here I shall be more
specific and suggest that the Procession of the Sun-Runner might be an equi-
noctial ritual in which on the two appropriate days of the year the Sun's Mithraic
surrogate 'walked the walk which his other surrogate, the shadow point, walked
in the world outside. In both venues to 'walk the walk is to 'talk the talk' — star-
talk. Or put another way, in the ancient cosmos and thus also in its authentic
replications Motion is Logos.

11. THE MITHRAEUM AS SYMBOLIC INSTRUMENT FOR

'INDUCTING THE INITIATES INTO A MYSTERY OF THE

DESCENT OF SOULS AND THEIR EXIT BACK OUT

AGAIN'— WITH SOME MODERN COMPARISONS

'Might be' is not 'is' and 'might have been' is not 'was'. In default of new and
direct evidence we cannot prove that the Procession of the Sun-Runner was
performed in mithraea twice annually on the days of the equinoxes. We can only

35 In the context of an insttument designed to tell the hours, 'creatines of a day is a neat
periphrasis.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 129

establish a likelihood, a probability, based on the intent of astronomical discourse
and practice on the one hand and astronomical/astrological symbolism on the
other.

In speaking of ritual we pass from the design and ideology of the mithraeum to
action and experience, from how and why the mithraeum is an 'image of the
universe' to how it functions as an instrument for 'inducting the initiates into a
mystery of the descent of souls and their exit back out again'.

In exploring the ancient mysteries one is dealing both with something done
and with something experienced. May we assume then that the descent and return
of souls was actually instantiated in a ritual and experienced psychically as a soul
journey? Perhaps there was indeed such a ritual with its corresponding experi-
ence, but it is only a presupposition, not a certainty, that there was necessarily
some special action and some special experience dedicated to each and every
major aspect of the mysteries.

It is, then, entirely possible that there never was a Mithraic ritual specific to the
soul journey. If the mithraeum/cave was duly consecrated, 'made sacred' by being
properly made a model of the universe, then merely by being in the mithraeum
and by apprehending it as the universe the initiate would effectively enjoy the
freedom of the heavens. The heavy lifting of space travel is achieved cognitively. In
fact we have already covered most of the 'how' of the mystery in describing what
it is that the Mithraist comes to know when he apprehends his mithraeum as an
authentic microcosm. At this stage we need scarcely add that the 'knowing' is not
acquired doctrinally and catechetically, or at least not primarily so.

Heuristically and hermeneutically, the problem of the mithraeum is much like
the problem of the tauroctony. Just as there is no Big Secret encoded in the
tauroctony, no all-explaining esoteric identity of Mithras the bull-slayer, so in the
mithraeum there is no necessity for a lost ritual to be postulated, deduced from
currently available evidence, or anticipated in the recovery of new evidence like
the scenes depicted on the Mainz ritual vessel.

There are nevertheless intimations of a relevant ritual or fragment of ritual in a
passage from Proclus which I have discussed recently (Beck 200Aa). In the
passage (reproduced below) Proclus is criticizing the second-century ce Neo-
pythagorean Numenius of Apamea for his explication of Plato's cosmology in the
'Myth of Er' at the close of the Republic. Now Numenius was Porphyry's source
for the cosmology of the De antro, and that cosmology, as I have demonstrated
earlier in this chapter, was Mithraic.

Numenius says that this place [i.e. the site of posthumous judgement] is the centre of the
entire cosmos, and likewise of the earth, because it is at once in the middle of heaven and
in the middle of the earth. ... By 'heaven' he means the sphere of the fixed stars, and he
says there are two chasms in this, Capricorn and Cancer, the latter a path down into
genesis, the former a path of ascent, and the rivers under the earth he calls the planets . . .
and introduces a further enormous fantasy {teratologian) with leapings (pedeseis) of souls

130 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

from the tropics to the equinoxes and returns from these back to the tropics, leapings
that are all his own and that he transfers to these matters, stitching the Platonic utterances
together with astrological concerns and these with the mysteries (syrrapton ta Platonika
rhemata tois genethlialogikois kai tauta tois telestikois) . He invokes the poem of Homer
[i.e. Od. 13.109-12] as a witness to these two chasms ... (In remp. 2.128.26-129.13
Kroll). 36

Proclus here accuses Numenius of contaminating Platonic discourse with
improper discourse of two other types, first astrological (specifically genethlialo-
gical) discourse, and secondly mystery-cult discourse. The accusation is factually
correct on both counts. First, astrological as well as astronomical categories, for
example the system of planetary houses, play a large part in Porphyry's argument
and are there (De antro 21) explicitly attributed to Numenius. Secondly, Por-
phyry's essay is full of allusions to Mithraism and its mysteries, and there is no
reason to suppose that this discourse did not also reach Porphyry via Numenius.
In fact the simplest and most plausible hypothesis is that both discourses were
transmitted in tandem from the Mithraists to Numenius to Porphyry.

What then are we to make of the 'fantasy' of 'leapings of souls from the tropics
to the equinoxes and returns from these back to the tropics'? Clearly it is ritual
action replicating in the mithraeum the descent and return of souls. Whether the
initiates actually 'leapt' is questionable. Characterizing the initiates' movements
as celestial hopscotch may be no more than pejorative spin from the disapproving
Proclus.

The ritual binds the microcosm to the macrocosm as follows:

To 'leap'

from the mithraeum's 'northern' side-bench

to its 'southern' side-bench

across its 'equatorial' aisle

is to replicate

the soul's journey

from its entry into the world at the northern tropic,

Cautopates presiding,

to its exit from the southern tropic,

Cautes presiding,

through a life under the tutelage of Mithras

on the equator at the equinoxes.

Before we turn from action to experience we shall adduce two comparison
rituals. The first is the most familiar of all rituals in the Christian tradition, at
least in those parts of the tradition which emphasize symbolic action, whether
sacramental or memorial: the Christian eucharist or mass. While still current, in

36 Trans. Lamberton 1986: 66 f., with minor changes and a correction (isemerina — 'equinoxes',
not 'solstices'). The last sentence quoted shows that Proclus is indeed drawing on the same passage of
Numenius as Porphyry, i.e. an allegorization of Homer's cave of the nymphs in Odyssey 13.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 131

origin the rite goes back to antiquity, where it was contemporaneous with the
rituals of Mithraism. It is a product, ultimately, of the same culture.

Now the mass is a vast carrier of meaning. In one of its perhaps minor
intentions, it is a journey to heaven, a ritual mode of gaining access to another,
wider world while still planted firmly in this. Introibo ad altare dei, the start of the
Old Roman Rite, is more than just voiced stage directions, the priest's matter-of-
fact statement that he is about to move up the physical aisle to the physical altar.
It is the commencement of a transfer, accomplished in the charged language and
the charged action, from earth to heaven. Yet, because this is a ritual journey, the
point of departure is never really left — it is not supposed to be — and the
destination is only approximated. Heaven, for a time and after a fashion, is
realized on earth; earth transported to heaven. As illustration I quote from a
description of the mass which concludes a book on ritual by scholars of the
biogenetic structuralist school to which I alluded in Chapter 1 (sect. 5). The
author of this study is a Jesuit priest (Murphy 1979: 323-4).

The priest incenses the altar. . . by circling around it in an orbiting motion. . . . [T]he
circling . . . brings the worship into synchrony with the circling of the planets around the
sun, the stars around the galactic center, and even with the heavenly worship conceived of
as adoration around the divine throne. . . . [R]otational motion points to the altar as the
central axis of all rotation, the eternal still point.

Note, incidentally, the updating of the cosmology: the physical heavens are re-
represented in terms compatible with their representation in modern astronomy.
Our second comparator is as obscure as the first is familiar. In the 1990s two
small 'cults', in the modern derogatory sense of the word, achieved considerable
notoriety by the suicide and murder of some of their members. These cults were
the Solar Temple and Heaven's Gate. They are of interest to us because their
intent was the same as the Mithraists', to get their initiates to heaven. But instead
of attempting the journey symbolically and ritually, both cults sent their mem-
bers on their way in real time and in real life — or rather, in real death. 37 But
before paranoia drove them to suicide and murder the initiates of the Solar
Temple were strong practitioners of ritual. Given their name, it will come as no
surprise that they timed their ceremonies to the seasonal cycles of Sun and Moon.
I quote from a sociological study of the cult (Hall and Schuyler 1997: 294). 3S

37 For a summary of the incidents of suicide/murder see Beck 1998£: 343.

38 Sociological comparison is as interesting as ritual comparison. Hall and Schuyler emphasize
the 'respectable' insider status of the initiates of the Solar Temple as 'hardly a sect of the dispossessed.
It appealed mostly to the affluent bourgeoisie and people of the new middle classes. Among the dead
in the so-called Transit [i.e. to the heavens by suicide or 'assisted suicide'] were a mayor of a Quebec
town, a journalist, an official in the Quebec Ministry of Finance, and a French nuclear engineer'
( 1 997: 287) . Particularly worrying to the authorities was the infiltration, as it would be perceived, of
Hydro Quebec, an iconic institution in Quebecois self-definition. The story of how the cult became
marginalized and self-marginalized is extraordinarily interesting (ibid. 296—303, Hall and Schuyler's
second 'thesis', headed 'the struggle over cultural legitimacy'). Since this was a fate which Mithraism

132 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

Once a month, members . . . came from all over Quebec for a meeting on the night of the
full moon. Gatherings also marked the transits of the earth around the sun. Jean-Francois
Mayer [a Swiss historian of religion] recalls attending a similar celebration — a bonfire
held in the French Savoie countryside to mark the 1987 summer solstice. 'The only
ceremonial part was the fire, and people came from several sides, each with a torch, and
put it in. And there were also some instructions: we had always to turn around the fire
only clockwise.' During the event, Mayer remarked to a Temple representative, 'Oh, this
is ritual'. 'Well, no', the man replied. 'Real ritual, it's something much more'.

What now of the subjective experience of the Mithraic mystery? Immediately
one must throw in a set of cautions.

First, as said in the preceding section, the nub of the experience may be simply
the initiate's apprehension of his 'cave' as an authentic microcosm. There is no
need for an experience of space travel, of getting to heaven, when you are already
there in your appropriate place on your side-bench.

Secondly, in the twenty-first century let us at last recognize that the tyranny of
psychic dualism, the dichotomy between reason and passion, established by Plato
and the Greeks and confirmed into modernity by Descartes, is dead. Late
twentieth-century cognitive and neuro-science have buried it. 39 Its wraith how-
ever continues to haunt the study of the mental life of the ancients, where we are
still far too respectful of their psychic taxonomies. It was all very well for Aristotle
(Fr. 15) to insist that finally in the mysteries one does not learn {mathein)
something, one experiences (pathein) something. For us however the distinction
is or should be of little consequence. As I said at the start of this section, in the
Mithraic mystery of the descent and return of the soul 'the heavy lifting of space
travel is achieved cognitively '. The feelings which the Mithraic cosmonaut experi-
ences as he undergoes induction into this mystery are part and parcel of getting to
know his cave as universe.

Thirdly, although the experience of the initiate may have been in some sense
'extraordinary', 40 we need not suppose that it was necessarily exotic and intense.
I used to imagine that it was indeed of a different order of experience altogether,
akin to the shaman's soul-travel, and cognate to those celestial ascents found in
the ancient Gnostic and magical sources. 41 The problem with this supposition,
its naivety apart, is that it would mean that the Mithraic Mysteries somehow
managed to make a routine out of what elsewhere seems to have been a solitary

manifestly avoided (until the empire's definitive swing to Christianity), comparison here is a study of
contrast: how a group which is 'in the world' but not ultimately 'of the world' maintains or fails to
maintain worldly approval, particularly the approval of the political, social, and cultural authorities
and arbiters.

39 As good a telling of psychic dualism's demise as any, at least fof the lay person, is the
neurologist Antonio Damasio's pair of studies, Descartes' Error (1994) and Looking for Spinoza
(2003). See also, from a philosopher's perspective, R. de Sousa's, The Rationality of Emotion (1991).

40 Walter Burkert's characterization (1987: title of ch. 4).

41 On the soul's celestial ascent and the scholarship thereon, see Beck 1988: 73-85, 93—100,
index s. 'soul, celestial journey'.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 133

and individual experience. Apart from the implausibility of this entailment, it is
not documented by any evidence — unless one believes (as almost no one does)
that the so-called 'Mithras Liturgy' 42 is an authentic Mithraic experience rather
than a magical adventure with gleanings from the Mithraic mysteries. Certainly
one is prepared to credit the Eleusinian Mysteries with realizing an initiatory
experience which was replicable year after year, effective on a mass of participants,
and of great, even life-transforming, intensity for the individual. But in the first
place there is a range of explicit testimony to the intensity and singularity of the
Eleusinian experience. Secondly, in contrast to the ongoing life of a Mithraic
community, the whole Eleusinian experience was concentrated into that one
initiation, albeit a climax prepared for over several days. If you did not attain to
that experience, you had accomplished nothing. Put somewhat cynically, your
investment was too great not to experience the experience — or at least to suppose
that you had.

12. TO 'EXPERIENCE', TO 'SURMISE', AND TO
'REPRESENT': DIO'S TWELFTH (OLYMPIC) ORATION

In Ancient Mystery Cults Walter Burkert begins his discussion of the experience of
initiation (1987: ch. IV, 89-1 14) 43 with a passage (ch. 33) from Dio Chrysos-
tom's Oration 12, the Olympicus:

If one would bring a man, Greek or barbarian, for initiation into a mystic recess, 44
overwhelming by its beauty and size, so that he would behold many mystic views and hear
many sounds of the kind, with darkness and light appearing in sudden changes and other
innumerable things happening, and even, as they do in the so-called enthronement
ceremony (thronismoi) 45 — they have the initiands sit down, and they dance around
them 46 — if all this were happening, would it be possible that such a man should
experience (pathein) just nothing in his soul, that he should not come to surmise
(hyponoesai) that there is some wiser insight and plan in all that is going on, even if he
came from utmost barbary? (Trans. Burkert 1987: 89—90)

42 Dieterich 1923; Betz 2003.

43 In my opinion, Burkert's exploration of the ancient evidence on the initiates' experience is
unsurpassed.

44 'Recess': mychon, by emendation from the manuscripts' mython.

45 In the Mithraic mysteries we have no evidence for the enthronement of initiands. In the ritual
of the Archery of the Father (Scene A on the Mainz vessel) the initiating Father is seated on a chair
from where he menaces the initiand with drawn bow and arrow (Horn 1994; Beck 2000: 149—54).
Mithras himself, as we have seen, has 'his proper seat at the equinoxes', replicated as the cult-niche in
the microcosm of the mithraeum. Finally, an inscription in the 'Pareti dipinte' mithraeum at Ostia
records the dedication of a 'throne to the Sun' (V266, thronum Soli).

46 Cf. the description of the Solar Temple ritual quoted above: 'we had always to turn around the
fire only clockwise'. The cosmic dance, orchestrated by the Sun, is of course an ancient common-
place.

134 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

As Burkert goes on to say (ibid. 90), 'the intended reference is the cosmos, the
dance of stars and sun around the earth and other marvels of nature that surpass
the artful contrivances of mystery ceremonies'. 47 But my point here is not to
reinforce what we have already established, that a mystery hall is a mini-cosmos,
but rather to track, as does Dio, the modalities of the initiand's perception or
apprehension of the mystery hall as mini-cosmos. A pathos of the soul is
accompanied by a surmise that there is a wise underlying purpose to both the
happenings in and the design of the mystery hall. The further inference is then
made that just as there is human intent in the plan of the mystery hall and what
happens there, so there has to be divine intent in the macrocosm which the
mystery hall replicates.

Ultimately, Dio's argument is a variant on the argument from design for a
world governed by Providence. What interests us, however, is not the conclusion
of the argument but what Dio has to say about the making of representations
which are essential components of the initiate's experience. In point of fact the
principal topic of the entire Olympicus is precisely representation. What did the
sculptor Phidias intend in his representation of Zeus in the great cult statue at
Olympia? How does Phidias' representation of Zeus differ from Homer's in the
epics? What mental representations do we, the beholders of the statue, make in
conformity with this template which Phidias has left us? What representations
ought we to make as rational and moral beings? Though in antique guise, Dio
asks much the same questions as the cognitivists we met in Chapter 6 now ask —
and from much the same premise: religion is a matter of constructing mental and
public representations.

How do those who are 'into' religion (or who 'do religion', to use another
colloquialism) go about constructing representations? Again Dio has some
interesting answers, which he presents in terms of the 'sources' of religion. 48
These are of two types, the second of which comprises the makers of public
representations: the poets, the law-givers (who establish the institutions of
religion), the visual artists, and the philosophers (39-48). Since Dio is speaking
about Phidias' statue of Zeus at Olympia, his focus is naturally on the creators in
the third category, the visual artists, whom he also calls the 'craftsmen' {demiour-
goi), no doubt deliberately invoking connotations of Plato's cosmic 'demiurge' in
the Timaeus.

Dio's other 'source' of religion is human cognition (27—37). Cognition, Dio
holds, is innate and autonomous in the sense that we do not need to be taught
how to use it in order to form mental representations and so to apprehend our

47 Burkert continues: 'the comparison of the cosmos with a mystery hall goes back to the Stoic
philosopher Cleanthes' {Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta 1, no. 538). Interestingly, in the macrocos-
mic mystery the Sun is the 'torchbearer' {daidouchos) , though the reference there is of course to the
Eleusinian Torchbearer, not the Mithraic pair.

48 The literal pegai ('springs') is used at ch. 47. See the 'analysis' of the oration in D. A. Russell's
edition (1992: 16-19).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 135

environment correctly. Dio does not of course use the language of cognition and
mental representation. In the discourse of his times he speaks ofdoxa and epinoia,
'opinion' and 'thought' (27), and in the passage quoted above (33) of 'surmise' (as
a verb, hyponoesai) . But the intent is the same, and Dio's main point is unaffected:
that at least some of our capacity for opinions, thoughts, and surmises is innate,
not culturally acquired. On this Dio is emphatic and insistent: 'opinion and
thought common to the entire human race, both Greeks and barbarians, essential
and innate {anankaia kai emphytos), naturally occurring in every rational crea-
ture, without mortal teacher or mystagogue, never deceptive

Dio is deploying a version of the familiar Stoic argument from universal
human consensus for the existence and purposeful benevolence of the gods and
especially of 'the Leader of All' (27), Zeus as Providence. Now the existence or
otherwise of those particular objects of cognition is not at issue here. What
matters is rather the process of cognition and the cognizing human mind as Dio
construes them. One object of cognition does however concern us closely: it is —
or was — an object in the actual human environment, namely the mystery hall,
together with what transpires there.

The witness to the mystery, says Dio, reacts both emotionally and intellec-
tually. His/her intellectual reaction is a 'surmise' {hyponoesai) . As usual in an-
tiquity, Dio translates this 'surmise' into propositional form, an opinion or
thought, which happens to be true in Dio's view, 'that there is some wiser insight
and plan in all that is going on'. From a contemporary cognitivist perspective, we
might rather say that the witness to the mysteries makes for himself/herself
certain mental representations of the place and the events, representations in
which we would be unwise to attempt to disentangle an emotional from an
intellectual component. These representations are neither proto-propositions on
the one hand nor interior videos on the other. They are the product of innate
mental capacities, as Dio affirms, but they are thoroughly conditioned culturally.
Yes, the visitor 'from utmost barbary' would include 'purpose' in his/her repre-
sentation, but that would be because he/she would recognize an instrument or
tool, a means-to-an-end thing, a category for which our species has a dedicated
intelligence. 49 But the barbarian's representation would otherwise bear little

49 On the development of technical intelligence in the human mind, Mithen 1996; on the
mental template for 'tool', Boyer 2001: 59—61. Boyer further postulates an 'inference system'
dedicated not to the 'domain of man-made objects 1 but to the more specific task of ' "finding out
how to handle tool-like objects" 1 (ibid. 93—135, esp. 102). Dio's barbarian, in a Boyeresque
scenario, recognizes the mystery hall as an artefact, which flags it for the inference system which
processes questions of purpose and intent. All this cognition is of course well below the threshold of
consciousness, and the capacity for it, along with other inference systems, is innate. But pace Dio,
the barbarian gets no further: he can infer a designer, but not the designer's actual intent, and
certainly not the intent's superiority ('that there is some wiser insight and plan in all that is going
on'). Only someone trained in the culture, i.e. a Greek, can apprehend 'what it's for', and the
Greek's apprehension, though not realized in propositional form, would be above the threshold of
consciousness.

136 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

resemblance to the Greek's, for the cosmos replicated in the mystery hall is not
the actual cosmos but the cosmos as culturally constructed by the Greeks. A
Greek can apprehend it, a barbarian cannot. With good reason the Eleusinian
mysteries were restricted to Greek-speakers. Speaking the language is a good
index of an ability to apprehend correctly a culture's artefacts and structured
activities, to form appropriate representations, in other words.

Dio's use of hyponoesai ('surmise') recalls the use of the same word (in noun
form, hyponoia) by his contemporary Plutarch, in a passage from On Isis and
Osiris (27) which we have looked at twice already. 50 Plutarch there relates how
the goddess Isis herself founded her mysteries by 'mixing into the holiest rituals
images, thoughts, and imitations of her former experiences' (tats hagiotatais
anamixasa teletais eikonas kai hyponoias kai mimemata ton tote pathematdn). As
I suggested, one might think of the central term hyponoiai (literally 'under-
thoughts') as the realization of the mysteries in the mode of cognition, just as
their visual realization is the icon (eikonas) and their performative realization the
ritual (mimemata). The latter two are public representations, the former private
representations of the thinking and experiencing mind.

13. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AS MODELLED BY

BIOGENETIC STRUCTURALISM AND

'NEUROTHEOLOGY'

'The thinking and experiencing mind.' I warned above against separating
thought from emotion, so we shall not move on from hyponoia to pathos as if
they were separable components of the mystery experience. Is there anything
more to say of that experience as an integrated whole? On the subjective
experience of initiation Walter Burkert (1987: 89-1 14) has probably interpreted
the extant ancient testimonies to the fullest extent possible. I at least have nothing
to add on that score.

However, in the last four decades a new subdiscipline composed of neurosci-
entists, psychologists, religionists, and philosophers has started to address ques-
tions of religious experience not just in terms of states of mind and emotion but
also in terms of the concomitant neural events taking place in the brain and
nervous system of the person undergoing the religious experience. Their models
of religious experience are germane to our present study because, while cultures
and religions come and go, the human brain which ultimately sustains all
cultures and all religions by its ceaseless making of mental representations is
still today what it was two thousand year ago.

The scholars and scientists who have proposed these models gave their sub-
discipline singularly unhelpful names: first 'biogenetic structuralism' and then

so Ch. 1, sect. 1; Ch. 4, sect. 10.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 137

'neuro theology'. The former was merely opaque, but the latter is more seriously
suspect because it seems to imply neural access to the supernatural. Indeed, it is
not unfair to say that the neurotheologians do seriously entertain concepts of a
transcendental reality accessed by and thus independent of the brain/mind
representing it in various ways in various religious experiences. Ontologically,
altogether too much is postulated for the transcendent, whether it is called God
or the Sacred or Absolute Unitary Being (the favoured term in d'Aquili and
Newberg (1999), 51 the book which I shall take as the basic source for neurotheol-
ogy's models and methods).

From our perspective in the secular academy, are biogenetic structuralism and
neurotheology (BS/N) hopelessly compromised by their traffic with the tran-
scendental? I think not. Their correlations of neural and other physiological
events with states of mind, feelings, and emotion are empirically verifiable, and
their consequent models of the workings of the brain and the mind in religious
experience can be assessed like other scientific models. Transcendentalism dwells
on the margins of the theory, not at its centre.

To reassure the sceptic about the utility and legitimacy of the basic BS/N
method, I shall quote from a critique by a self-acknowledged sceptic who is both
an evolutionary biologist and a philosopher (Pigliucci 2002: 269-70):

The book [Newberg and d'Aquili 2001] opens with its most informative chapter: the
story of an experiment carried out by the authors on a Buddhist immersed in Tibetan
meditation (as well as of a similar experiment on praying [Christian] nuns). The
practitioner of course thinks that this sort of experience gets him in touch with his
inner self, 'the truest part of who he is' and at the same time he is 'inextricably connected
to all of creation'. What the single photon emission computed tomography camera to
which he is connected shows is quite different. The scan images display an unusual level of
activity in the area of the brain called the posterior superior parietal lobe. The known
primary function of this area is to orient the individual in space, essentially a neurological
device to keep track of what's up or down, judge distances and relative positions, and in
general allow us to move around. When injuries occur in this area the subject cannot
properly move in its environment, with the brain apparently baffled at all these necessary
calculations of distance, angles, depth and so on. The posterior superior parietal lobe
accomplishes its task by first drawing a sharp distinction between the individual and
everything else, literally separating the physical self from the rest of the universe. This, in
turn, is made possible by a continuous flow of information from each of the body's
senses — mediated, of course, by the corresponding areas of the brain.

Under normal conditions, not surprisingly, the posterior superior parietal lobe shows a
high level of activity: after all, we constantly need to know where we are and what we are
doing. However, and here comes the kicker, during meditation (and — according to the
authors — many other similar states, including prayer and drug-induced 'mystical' experi-
ences . . . ) that whole section of the brain is essentially non-functional. Newberg and
D'Aquili suggest that the brain interprets the low level of sensorial input as a failure to

5 ] With the unfortunate title The Mystical Mind: again, a red rag to the secular academy!

138 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

find the borderline between self and the rest of the universe, which nicely explains the
feeling of 'being one with the cosmos' that these subjects experience.

Newberg and D'Aquili go on ... to correctly conclude that mystical experiences are
'real' in the sense of having a neurological counterpart. However, they somehow distin-
guish this sort of reality from the one induced by epilepsy, schizophrenia, delusions and so
on. Why? Aren't all these phenomena real in the same sense? In fact, given that we
experience the world through what amounts to a complex virtual reality simulation
created by our nervous system, how could any psychological state not be real in the
sense of having a neural correlate?

Instead of following their research to what seems to me its logical consequence — that
mystical experiences are no different from delusions and drug-induced states because they
alter the functioning of the posterior superior parietal lobe — the authors take a surprising
turn. 'Gene [d'Aquili] and I [i.e. Newberg] . . . believe that we saw evidence of a neuro-
logical process that has evolved to allow humans to transcend material existence and
acknowledge and connect with a deeper, more spiritual part of ourselves perceived of as an
absolute, universal reality that connects us to all that is'.

In other words, the authors think that what clearly looks like a malfunctioning of the
brain due to an unusual condition of sensorial deprivation, evolved as an adaptation to get
in touch with a higher level of reality.

Before staking out some middle ground, let me first dispose of the objection
that, whatever the experience of the trained meditator or the shaman, their
altered states of consciousness are irrelevant because our concern is with the
experience of the religious rank and file, ordinary Mithraists in ordinary
mithraea. Now one of the most impressive features of BS/N is its modelling of
a continuum of religious experience of differing intensity from meditation as
described above to the somewhat unfocused participation in routine ceremonial
ritual of the ordinary member of a congregation.

On this continuum, the intensity of, and the attention paid to, the experience
is by no means the sole distinction. Actually the model postulates two parallel
continua, each of which involves the autonomous nervous system (ANS) differ-
ently. Meditation activates the ANS primarily on its parasympathetic (tropho-
tropic) side, ritual (especially fast-paced ritual) primarily on its sympathetic
(ergotropic) side. 52 As a further complication, more intense and focused engage-
ment in either meditation or ritual activates, according to the model, the less
involved side of the ANS, finally causing both parts to 'discharge' together.

In the brain itself different areas and different neuronal circuits are involved in
different religious experiences. One must of course avoid thinking in terms of an
old phrenologist's chart. There is no area of the brain which 'does' meditation,
and none which 'does' ritual either, and there is certainly no super-area dedicated
to 'religion'. The human brain — indeed the animal brain — is a superb multi-
tasking apparatus, evolved over the millennia to cope with and to survive in a

52 I use here the biogenetic structuralist terminology as in Lex 1979: 130-47. D'Aquili and
Newberg (1999: 23—7) speak of 'hyperquiescent' and 'hyperarousal' states.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 139

complex and dangerous environment. No species of higher animal could ever
have afforded the luxury of dedicated neuronal circuitry, let alone circuitry
dedicated to meditating on transcendental realities.

In the BS/N model there are however different parts of the brain which take
the lead, as it were, not in different religious experiences but at the stage prior
to any experience or activity at all, the organization and integration of sensory
input for processing by the brain/mind as a whole. The model postulates four
'tertiary association areas' (d'Aquili and Newberg 1999: 32-7): 53 (1) 'the
visual association area . . . located in the inferior temporal lobe'; (2) 'the orienta-
tion association area ... in the posterior superior parietal lobe'; (3) 'the attention
association area ... in the most forward aspect of the brain, the prefrontal cortex';
and (4) 'the verbal-conceptual association area ... at the junction of the temporal,
parietal, and occipital lobes but technically. . . in the inferior parietal lobe'. The
posterior superior parietal lobe we have met already in the case of the meditators
(above). An important and distinctive role is played by each of the brain's two
hemispheres, the left and the right, in all brain/mind processes (ibid. 28-31; Lex
1979: 124-30). Finally, the limbic system (mainly the amygdala, the hippocam-
pus, and the hypothalamus) plays the lead in feeling and emotion, the affective
coloration of all experience (d'Aquili and Newberg 1999: 37-41).

On the platform of the brain so structured BS/N, like all contemporary
theories of neurocognition, builds a model of the structure of our thoughts,
sensations, and emotions, all the subjective phenomena of the human mind. The
model postulates seven 'primary functional components of the mind' which it
calls 'cognitive operators' (ibid. 50-7). 'Cognitive operators are essentially analo-
gous to the operators used in mathematics', for example the signs '+' and 'x'
which tell us to relate numbers by addition and multiplication respectively. The
seven primary cognitive operators are (1) the holistic operator, (2) the reduc-
tionist operator, (3) the causal operator, (4) the abstractive operator, (5) the
binary operator, (6) the quantitative operator, (7) the emotional value operator.

These seven primary cognitive operators 'allow the mind to think, feel,
experience, order, and interpret the universe' (ibid. 51). They create 'cognitive
structures':

the result of the functioning of the cognitive operators is 'cognitive structures', which
simply refer to the subjective manifestations of ways in which reality is organized by the
operators. In other words, depending on which operator is functioning, the world is
perceived in terms of synthetic unity, abstract causal relationships, relationships of binary
opposition and so on. In ordinary, day-to-day-cognitive functioning, all these operators
function together, each relating its function to that of the others in order to construct
meaning from experience and create a coherent view of the world. (Ibid. 80)

53 'Tertiary' because much of the integration of sensory input has already been performed at
primary and secondary levels: e.g. 'the primary visual reception area does not receive an image so
much as it receives various patterns of lines, shapes, and colors' (d'Aquili and Newberg 1999: 31).

140 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

But what, the sceptic will rightly ask, is this 'universe' which is 'interpreted',
this 'reality' which is 'organized', this 'world' of which a 'coherent view' is
created? In answer, one must point to the philosophical foundation of BS/N
on phenomenology. 54 So 'reality', 'the universe', 'the world' is whatever you
choose finally to put at the end of your 'intending', your outreach into the
world through sensation and thought. You may postulate brute matter or energy,
transcendental being, God, or nothing more than an anti-solipsism marker, a
mere something to hold us together in a common universe. Your choice. Yes, the
neurotheologians do at times treat 'Absolute Unitary Being' as something onto-
logically real over and above its subjective attainment as an experience in
meditation. That is their privilege, for they write as often as not for a general
readership, not just the secular academy. All that need concern us here is the
simple question: do their deistic or theistic beliefs invalidate their approach? No,
they do not, for they are an optional appendage not a necessary postulate.

Our model of how the brain and mind function does not rely on there being an external
mystical object or being . . . If deaflerentation 55 of the orientation association area yields a
sense of no space and no time, it matters little if the deaflerentation causes the state of no
space and no time or allows us to enter this state that already exists 'out there'. (Ibid. 49)

BS/N thus distinguishes very precisely between reality and our constructions of
reality. Unlike the former, the latter are directly accessible and communicable.

We need take our survey of BS/N no further before judging its utility to our
project. Pigliucci's criticisms (above) are certainly just. But they are not fatal. And
his own reductionism is equally dangerous. Certainly, one must allow that there
would be no neurologically discernible difference between, for example, the
workings of the brain circuitry of a mystic experiencing union with the One
and a person whose posterior superior parietal lobe had been 'deafferentiated' by
trauma or by drugs. Certainly, too, we must set aside all questions of ultimate
realities accessed by the meditating mystic or the religious practitioner engaged in
ritual. All such experiences are brain/mind events — natural events, if somewhat
out of the ordinary. Nevertheless, reducing the experiences of the insane, the
drugged, the mystic, and the ritual performer to essentially the 'same' neuronal
event, while proper in physiology, is far from proper in a social-scientific inquiry
such as ours where group behaviour in a particular culture is the issue. Our
concern is with the minds of Mithraists, and how in a collective endeavour they
'got to know' their mithraeum as image of the universe and venue for imagined
soul-travel. For this BS/N's approach and methods, once pruned of transcenden-
talism, are legitimate and useful. 56

54 Explicitly acknowledged by e.g. d'Aquili and Newberg (1999: 177—93).

55 i.e. the temporary or permanent cutting offof an area of the brain: see d'Aquili and Newberg
1999: 41-2.

56 My acceptance of the methods of BS/N is limited to those early heuristic stages which concern
the workings of the human brain/mind outlined above. Its evolutionary account of the development
of religion I find unpersuasive, and the actual 'theology 1 in 'neurotheology' is not part of my mandate.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 141

14. THE 'COGNIZED ENVIRONMENT': THE

MITHRAEUM AS MATERIAL REPRESENTATION OF THE

INITIATE'S COGNIZED UNIVERSE

In the BS/N model our constructions of reality and the world constitute what is
called our 'cognized environment'. Brute reality itself, that which lies beyond our
senses and our thinking, is our 'operational environment'. 57 You cannot access
your operational environment directly, only through the structures of your
cognized environment. But your operational environment can and will affect
you — drastically if your cognized environment diverges from it too far. 58 That is
why humans and other species of higher animals not only construct their
cognized environments but also modify them.

Animals modify their cognized environments phylogenetically over the aeons
of evolutionary time. Humans have acquired the ability to represent to them-
selves environments replete with cognitive structures which enable them to do
much more than simply navigate their operational environment, survive, flour-
ish, and reproduce themselves. These additional cognitive structures we build
ontogenetically and socially, individual by individual and group by group. 59

I suggest that the mithraeum is a special case of a cognized environment. This
is the mithraeum as apprehended, a cognitive structure of the mind. The actual
built mithraeum is a material, hence 'public', representation of this mental
representation.

What I am not saying is that the physical mithraeum is the operational
environment. To say so would be to confuse the 'operational environment' in
the technical BS/N sense with the immediate physical environment one moves
around in, senses, and sometimes thinks about, an environment in the everyday
sense.

It is important to make this distinction explicit. The mithraeum was certainly
an environment in the banal sense: you could move around in it; you could sense
it and 'the things inside' by sight, touch, hearing, and smell. In that sense one
might say that it was the environment you 'operated' in. But this, as we have seen,
does not make it the 'operational environment' or even a part of the 'operational
environment' in the technical BS/N sense.

57 On the cognized and operational environments see d'Aquili et al. 1979: 12—14; Laughlin
1989: 16-17; 1997: 472-3.

58 No one can entertain a cognized environment which permits him/her to step blithely off a
precipice, unless of course he/she belongs to a winged species. Although we will never be able to
confirm it, a flawed cognized environment would appear to be the error of the Solar Temple and
Heavens Gate cultists (above, sect. 1 1).

59 Cf. the intriguing theory of Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi (2000) that at
the ontogenetic level the human brain — and the brains of higher animals too — functions as an
environment for 'neuronal group selection'; i.e. that the brain/mind evolves by natural selection
within the lifespan of each and every individual.

142 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

Furthermore, this mithraeum which you move around in and which you
apprehend by sight, touch, hearing, and smell is not your cognized environment
either. Your cognized environment is the construction which your mind and your
senses working together put upon this particular bit of the mundane environ-
ment.

But of course you are not just someone who has stumbled fortuitously into this
particular chunk of three-dimensional space. You are an initiate of Mithras, so it
is with the mind of an initiate that you apprehend this space, and you apprehend
it not just as a room but as a 'mithraeum'. This mithraeum of the mind is your
cognized environment. The actual mithraeum, as I have said, is a material, hence
public', representation in brick and stone (or natural rock) of this cognized
environment. Functionally it ensures that my cognized environment as a Mith-
raist in a mithraeum matches yours, and vice versa.

Think of a cognized environment as a set of working templates of reality, of
'the way things are'. As humans we have several templates which we can call up
and put in place in addition to the template for physical reality which our minds
must develop for mere ontogenetic and phylogenetic survival. We all develop, for
example, the template of a cognized social environment to relate appropriately to
our conspecifics. For the most part the templates of our cognized physical and
social environments function automatically and unconsciously. We do not need
to think about not stepping off a precipice into thin air. These templates can of
course be called to consciousness, and those others which are perhaps unique to
members of our species we not only construct in the full glare of consciousness
but also communicate publicly, conspecific to conspecific. They are the products
of education and training, formal and informal, and they are essential parts of
our socio-cultural apparatus.

Why do we say that the mithraeum as apprehended by the initiate is a special
case of a cognized environment? Because (1) it claims to represent more accur-
ately than any secular or profane representation ever could the real universe and
the uniquely true operational environment of all ensouled beings everywhere and
everywhen, in time and in eternity; and (2) it substantiates that claim by
immersing the initiate physically in an isomorphic 'image of the universe'
whose 'contents by their proportionate arrangement furnished symbols of the
universe's elements and climates' (Porphyry, De antro 6).

Mapping the cognized environment of a Mithraist has been our primary task
in this chapter, though of course we have not until now entertained the
mithraeum's blueprint in these terms. What now remains is briefly to apply the
BS/N approach to the Mithraist's apprehension of his mithraeum — qua cognized
environment, qua symbolic universe. We shall limit ourselves to this appre-
hended ritual context, leaving aside the apprehension of actual rituals, since we
know rather less about them than about the mithraeum. In any case, I suspect
that in the Mithraic mysteries place is prior to praxis (supposing per impossibile
that one can meaningfully disentangle the two) .

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 143

Let us return to our metaphor of the cognized environment as a set of
templates, and let us think of the apprehended mithraeum as a special template
which the initiate constructs as he is drawn into the life of the mithraeum as
community inside the mithraeum as physical environment. Remember, though,
that the cognized mithraeum as special template is only a metaphor, so please do
not reify it.

The power of the apprehended mithraeum within the mind of the apprehend-
ing initiate, both intellectually and emotionally, is a function of (1) the radical
simplification and mathematical structuring of the special template, (2) the
subordination of non-cosmological templates to the special template, and (3)
the universality of the special template (subjectively the sense that there is no
larger reality to be apprehended).

(1). When within the mithraeum, the initiate's cognized environment is
reduced to a few simple primary constituents and their relationships in space
and time: the fixed stars, the Sun and Moon and their periods, the other planets,
their circular orbits, the pinpoint central earth, Mithras, Cautes and Cautopates,
the souls of initiates descending and returning.

(2). It is these cosmological features of the initiate's cognized environment
which are brought to consciousness, focused on, and privileged as the relevant
'reality'. However, you do not and you cannot switch off or nullify all other
aspects of your cognized environment. 60 For example, if you are seated on the
mithraeum's 'northern' bench you know that you are 'above' or 'higher' than your
colleagues on the 'southern' bench. But you also know and cannot help knowing
that as a matter of physical fact the two benches here on earth rise to the same
height above the floor of the aisle. But which of the two 'facts' is part of your
cognized environment qua Mithraist in a mithraeum, and which accordingly is
the 'truer' and more 'real'? Obviously the former.

(3). Your sense of your cognized environment as the totality of all that is or was
or will be is greatly heightened by what we termed 'the Marino experience'
(above, sect. 2, para. 6.1), the feeling that as you enter the confined space of
the mithraeum you are entering something which is in reality bigger than its
environment (in the everyday sense). That of course is a stark impossibility. Yet it
is precisely what the mithraeum as 'image of the universe' asserts: the inside is
larger than the outside — or has no outside at all; the contained contains the
container. This paradox and the cognitive dissonance it arouses are fundamental
to the mystery of cosmic soul travel. Yes, your mithraeum is still a furnished room
in which workaday cognition still functions. But it is simultaneously the universe
in which initiate's cognition rules; the inside really is bigger than the outside and
the contained does indeed contain the container.

60 This is possible only in extreme meditative states (d'Aquili and Newberg 1999: 109—20), but
they were not on the regular Mithraic agenda, as far as we know.

144 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

Here we may drop the 'template' metaphor — it has served its turn — and think
of the apprehended mithraeum purely in BS/N terms as a 'cognitive structure'.
You will recall (from the preceding section of this chapter) that cognitive
structures are built by the mind's 'cognitive operators'. The structures are 'the
subjective manifestations of ways in which reality is organized by the operators'
(d'Aquili and Newberg 1999: 80). As mental phenomena they are not themselves
located in specific parts of the physical brain — to suppose so would be onto-
logically erroneous — but the operators which build and activate them are cor-
related with specific parts of the brain, principally with the 'tertiary association
areas', which we reviewed together with the operators in the preceding section.
Again, the correlation is not exclusive or one-on-one. The brain has no sealed and
autonomous compartments, any more than does the mind.

Now it seems to me that a good starting point for exploring the mental
structure which is the cognized mithraeum would be the long quotation from
Pigliucci's article (2002: 269-70) in the preceding section, since it indicates
explicitly where the neurotheologians and their critics are on common ground
as well as where their paths diverge. What is under discussion there is activity —
an unusually low level of activity — in the posterior superior parietal lobe. This
part of the brain is the 'orientation association area' (OAA) in BS/N terminology.

The known primary function of this area is to orient the individual in space, essentially a
neurological device to keep track of what's up or down, judge distances and relative
positions, and in general allow us to move around. When injuries occur in this area the
subject cannot properly move in its environment, with the brain apparently baffled at all
these necessary calculations of distance, angles, depth and so on. The posterior superior
parietal lobe accomplishes its task by first drawing a sharp distinction between the
individual and everything else, literally separating the physical self from the rest of the
universe. This, in turn, is made possible by a continuous flow of information from each of
the body's senses — mediated, of course, by the corresponding areas of the brain. (Pigliucci
2002: 269)

The function of the OAA in orienting the individual spatially is not in dispute.
Note that in answering the question 'where am I?' the OAA also answers part of
the question 'who/what am I?' by separating 'me' from 'not me'. It defines
identity by distinguishing between the self and the rest of the universe. In
humans these cognitive questions can be entertained consciously and reflectively.

In meditation the OAA shows an unusually low level of activity. It appears to
be somewhat isolated, 'deaflerentated' in BS/N terms, from the rest of the brain.
Hence the mystic's sense of the breaking down of the boundaries between self and
non-self and of the unity of all being.

It is here that the neurotheologians and the sceptics begin to part company.
The sceptics do not deny the 'reality' of the mystic's subjective experience (how
could they?); they point instead to the same feeling of radical disorientation
experienced by individuals with lesions in the posterior superior parietal lobe and

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 145

ask why the mystic's experience should not be explained — and explained away —
as an analogous mental epiphenomenon. Why promote a subjective sense of no
self and no other into an objective Absolute Unitary Being (capitalization sic)?
Fortunately our business can all be done before the fork in the road. We are
concerned with the cognitive structures of Mithraists, not with their structures'
independent ontological reality

The intent of the Mithraic mysteries, it seems clear to me, was not to abolish
but to redefine the mind's normal and necessary distinction between 'me' and 'not
me', between the self and the self's environment. Literally this was a process of
reorientation, and it was not reorientation in a trivial sense, as one might tell
someone 'you're here on the map, not there', or 'you're facing east, not west'.
Rather, it was what one might call 'deep reorientation', in which 'here' and 'there'
are radically redefined and a new map substituted for or superimposed on the old.
More important, it was not inculcated by instruction, or not primarily so. No
doubt initiates here and there were taught the relevant cosmology in propos-
itional form. But actually to experience 'the descent and return of souls', rather
than just to know about it as something germane to you before your birth and
after your death, required a more profound reconfiguration of your cognized
environment. Such re-cognition could only be acquired by activity within the
mithraeum (moving around, occupying space) and by sense perception of
'the things inside in proportionate arrangement'. Only so could you recognize
the mithraeum for what it was intended to be and so accomplish there what you
had to accomplish. In principle, learning cosmic soul-travel in a mini-universe is
no different from learning to drive in a car; for it is in a car and by driving a car,
not in a classroom or from a book, that you learn to drive competently and
successfully. Similarly, you get to know your mithraeum as universe by road-
testing it as universe. Epistemically, we return to the old distinction between
'knowing that' and 'knowing how to', between propositional knowledge and
practical knowledge. Conditioned as we are to ancient hierarchies of the intellect,
we tend to think of the former as the 'higher' form of knowledge. But we may
surely agree that the latter is the 'deeper', for it engages more brain areas and brain
circuitry, not to mention the senses and the autonomic nervous system. Socrates
was intuitively right in valuing the craftsman's understanding of his trade.

To be more precise, we might compare learning how to navigate the universe
in the mithraeum to learning how to drive not on the road but in a simulator.
The mithraeum is indeed the universe, but it is of course a virtual universe. And
the advantage of a simulator, whether a simulated road and car or a simulated
universe, is that you pay no immediate penalty for your mistakes. But sooner or
later you must transfer your newly minted cognized environment from the
simulator to the road, to the context where steering wheel, clutch, gear shift,
accelerator, and brake issue in an actually existing, actually moving car. No more
virtual ritual reality, which means no more make-believe operational environ-
ment, no more risk-free crashes. Of your subsequent driving record in your

146 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

material car on the material road we can say much, and what we say is all
verifiable, in principle if not practice. Of your record as an initiate of Mithras
who has graduated from your esoteric simulator at death we can say nothing
whatsoever, at least not in the secular academy. But in truth, your postgraduate
career, if indeed you have one, concerns us not at all. Rather it is your cognitive
processes, your mind/brain states while still among us in your cosmonaut's flight
simulator, that claim our attention. These, thanks largely to advances in cognitive
science, are now increasingly accessible to us.

Clearly the mental structure of the cognized mithraeum subsists and is
activated (for want of better words) in the 'orientation association area' of the
brain, but it is activated there not in isolation — the OAA is not 'deafierentated' as
in the mystic's contemplation — but in response to sensory input from sight,
touch, hearing, smell, taste, all of which is, as it were, pre-programmed. There are
two aspects to this pre-programming of sensory stimuli. One is in the 'public'
objective world. Everything that the initiate sees, touches, hears, smells, and
tastes in the mithraeum, all 'the things inside', are designed 'by proportionate
arrangement' to establish the equation 'mithraeum = universe'. The second
aspect of the pre-programming is in the private subjective world of the initiate's
mind. The structure of the cognized mithraeum does not have to be built anew
from sensation and interpretation of sensation each time the initiate enters. It is
there 'in mind' and needs only to be reactivated.

Obviously too the 'visual association area' (VAA, 'located in the inferior
temporal lobe') is also engaged; or to retain the language used above, one can
say that the mental structure of the cognized mithraeum subsists and is activated
in the VAA:

The neurons in the [tertiary] visual association area receive highly processed input from
the secondary visual areas (in the occipital lobes) from both hemispheres. These neurons
scan the entire visual field ... so as to alert the person to objects of interest or motivational
importance through the interconnections with the limbic system and the autonomic
nervous system. (d'Aquili and Newberg 1999: 32—3)

One need only add that to the Mithraist in his mithraeum 'the entire visual field'
and everything in it are pre-fraught with significance: what you see is the
universe.

Also engaged is the tertiary 'attention association area' (AAA, 'situated
in . . . the prefrontal cortex'):

No other area of the entire cerebral cortex is as intimately and richly interconnected with
the limbic system as is the attention association area . . . Likewise, this area is profusely
interconnected with all the secondary and tertiary sensory association cortices. Only the
attention association area receives fibers from all sensory modalities (vision, hearing,
touch, taste, and smell) as well as from the tertiary association areas . . . The attention
association area is involved in forming conceptual thoughts by means of its rich inter-
connections with the verbal-conceptual association area and can also help in forming

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 147

complicated visual images . . . Thus, this area has become involved in many types of
behaviors and activity, but goal-oriented behavior or even purposive organization of
thought always derives from input from the attention association area. (Ibid. 34-5)

Note here how emotion and value are aroused by the entrainment of the limbic
system with which the AAA is 'intimately and richly interconnected'. You will
not only recognize your mithraeum as universe but also feel intensely and of
course positively and warmly about it. The structure of your cognized
mithraeum, in other words, has built-in value.

The intent of the mithraeum, we know, was not merely to replicate the
universe in a physical model but to enable 'goal-oriented' action, namely the
enactment of the descent and return of souls in a mystery. Clearly this intent,
which is an integral part of the initiate's mental structure of the mithraeum, is
formed and activated in the AAA.

'The attention association area is involved in forming conceptual thoughts by
means of its rich interconnections with the verbal-conceptual association area',
the fourth of the tertiary association areas explored by d'Aquili and Newberg,
sited 'at the junction of the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes but techni-
cally. . . in the inferior parietal lobe'.

The verbal-conceptual association area may be the area of the greatest integration of
sensory input in the brain. In a sense, it is an association area of association areas, and it
maintains rich interconnections with the vision, hearing, and touch association areas . . .
The verbal-conceptual association area is also responsible for the generation of abstract
concepts and relating them to words. It accomplishes this task through rich interconnec-
tions with the language center, which is primarily located in the left hemisphere and
incorporates much of the temporal lobe and parts of the frontal and parietal lobes. The
verbal-conceptual association area is also involved in conceptual comparisons, the order-
ing of opposites, the naming of objects and categories of objects, and higher-order
grammatical and logical operations. (Ibid. 37)

The verbal-conceptual association area's (V-CAA) principal contribution to the
cognitive structure of the mithraeum is the logic which binds together and
articulates the whole, in fact precisely what we are calling 'star-talk'.

All four of the tertiary association areas of the brain described by d'Aquili and
Newberg participate in the creation and activation of the cognized mithraeum.
One must not think of this sort of mental structure as some sort of bounded
entity residing solely in a defined location of the brain or in a some dedicated
bunch of neurons. Of its nature the structure is both composite and diffuse. In a
sense it is both nowhere and everywhere. In my layman's opinion, what is unusual
about the cognized mithraeum is neither some peculiar quality of the structure
itself nor the modalities by which it is created in and by the association areas of an
initiate's brain, but rather the restriction of the stream of input through his senses
to data pre-programmed in his actual physical environment to carry the sign-
ificance 'mithraeum = universe'.

148 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

In BS/N theory, just as the brain has its association areas, so the mind has its
'cognitive operators' which are its 'primary functional components'. In the
preceding section of this chapter I listed and very briefly described these oper-
ators. The function of the operators is to build and articulate the cognitive
structures which 'allow the mind to think, feel, experience, order, and interpret
the universe'. BS/N theory postulates seven of these cognitive operators, three of
which seem to me especially germane to the formation of the cognized
mithraeum: the holistic operator, the binary operator, and the emotional value
operator.

I must admit to a certain unease about the concept of the cognitive operator.
The operators, as psychological rather than neurological constructs, are not as
accessible empirically as are the association areas discussed above. However,
cognition has to be analysed in one way or another, and the BS/N functional
differentiation by operators seems to me as reasonable as any. Perhaps the
operators should be considered heuristic devices rather than actual 'components'
of the mind. However, it is certainly proper to relate them, though non-exclu-
sively, to certain areas of the brain. Thus the holistic operator correlates with the
orientation association area, since it is primarily in the OAA that the brain/mind
learns to discriminate between 'me' and 'not-me' and so to define the self over
against the rest of the universe. Likewise, the emotional value operator correlates
with the limbic system, not of course in isolation but in conjunction with higher
(that is, less primitive) cortical areas, since our feelings are thoughts too, not just
raw affect or emotion. Lastly the binary operator correlates not with a particular
area or areas of the brain but with the brain's binary structure as two intercon-
nected hemispheres (left and right) each of which both complements and
duplicates the functions of the other.

The binary operator articulates the rich array of oppositions which are such a
prominent feature of the Mithraic mysteries, both internalized as cognitive
structure and externalized in words communicated, actions performed, and
'things inside the cave' visually apprehended. I have discussed binary opposition
in some detail in Chapter 5, section 8. Binary opposition is so fundamental to the
mysteries that I have postulated 'Harmony of Tension in Opposition' as one of
their two axioms or ultimate sacred postulates.

One must remember finally that realizing the mysteries in the mithraeum is
not an act of solitary contemplation. In the mithraeum we re-cognize our
conspecifics present as fellow souls, fellow voyagers in the macrocosm there
represented. Our kinship is actualized in communal ritual, not just by being
together in the mithraeum but by performing structured, repetitive actions
which, as d'Aquili and Newberg put it (1999: 89), 'synchronize affective, per-
ceptual-cognitive, and motor processes within the central nervous system of
individual participants and . . . among the various individual participants' (em-
phasis added).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 149

15. THE COGNIZED UNIVERSE AND CELESTIAL
NAVIGATION: THE CASE OF THE INDIGO BUNTING

Humans of course are not the only species of animal to construct a cognized
environment, though we are perhaps the only one to bring it to full conscious-
ness. We not only construct a cognized environment — any animal endowed with
locomotion must do this or die — but also think about it and talk to our
conspecifics about it. In other words, our cognized environment is more than
just the necessary mental proxy for our operational environment.

Together with our human ability to think about and talk to each other about
our cognized environment comes the ability to construct alternative environ-
ments, one of which, the 'mithraeum = universe', we have been analysing in the
present chapter. Other animals presumably do not have this luxury (though who
finally knows?). Their cognized environment is their sole template of reality, and
for each species natural selection has optimized that template for survival in its
operating environment.

In many instances it is possible to infer some particular feature of the cognized
environment of a species from the behaviour of the phenotype. As an analogy to
the cognized environment constructed by our Mithraic cosmonauts let us take a
look at the cognized environment of an animal which must travel vast terrestrial
distances from one location to another and back again at regular intervals, a
migratory bird — specifically the Indigo Bunting.

The Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea) was the subject of an elegant experiment
to determine empirically how it navigates, what features of its environment it selects
and constructs mentally as indicators of proper direction'. For long-distance
travellers there are no better or more reliable indicators than the celestial bodies,
for they are the same at your destination as at your point of departure and they are
equally accessible there as here. So it is with buntings. They navigate by the stars.
Specifically, the experiment, which was conducted in a planetarium, proved that
they navigate by reference to the north celestial pole recognized as the point around
which the circumpolar stars revolve (Emlen 1967; Berthold 2001: 153-4). 61

Now the revolution of the circumpolar stars is nothing but a manifestation of
universal daily motion, and universal daily motion is nothing other than the
Revolution (or circle or period) of the Same which Plato in the Timaeus construes
both as the highest visible manifestation of Unity and Reason and as existing, in a
more or less deformed copy, in the heads of humans and animals. 62 So by a nice
coincidence, which he would surely have savoured, the Indigo Bunting appears to
have done in a literal and scientifically verifiable way precisely what Plato urges us

61 See also the Smithsonian's website <http://natzoo.si.edu/Animals/Birdfacts/navigation.htm>.

62 See esp. Timaeus 47b5— c5, 90c6— d7, to which passages we shall return in the next chapter on
'star-talk'.

150 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

humans to do. It has cultivated internally the Revolution of the Same. By this it
navigates, by this it finds its way.

The venue of the bunting experiment was a planetarium, because in a plan-
etarium the motions of the celestial bodies can be replicated. In this respect a
planetarium is a model or image of the universe. The bunting of course cannot
discriminate between the model and 'the real thing', which is a comment not on
its powers of discernment or of representation but simply on its inability to
conceptualize. Nevertheless, a comparison between the bunting's planetarium
and the initiate's mithraeum is surely apposite. Each structure is an artificial
public representation of the mental representations of the macro-environment of
each of the two groups, buntings and Mithraists. In their respective model
universes each group constructs its cognized environment and learns to navigate
successfully. The difference is that our buntings learn to navigate in a proxy model
universe, and if they are released they will perform exactly as do their conspecifics
in the world outside; in contrast, our Mithraists learn to navigate in an alternative
universe which, to be sure, shares the same features and structure as our visible
cosmos but which, esoterically, one enters and leaves not from and to some
workaday earthly venue but by descent of the soul from the heavens at birth and
its departure thither at death.

16. CONCLUSION

'What was it like?' Asked of the initiate's subjective experience the question is
finally unanswerable, unless of course we construe it in the most literal way as a
request for an analogy. The problem is not so much the inability to enter other
minds as the 'ineffability' of the experience. It is literally indescribable. This is not
because it is or pretends to be something particularly grand or 'sacred'. It is
simply that language cannot do the job. 'Unspeakable words which cannot be
spoken' {arrheta rhemata ha ouk exon anthropoi lalesai), said the Christian Paul of
Tarsus of his own ascent as far as the 'third heaven' (2 Corinthians 12: 2-4), not
'words which are unspeakable because they may not be spoken'. Language is
linear, sequential, left-brain, and so cannot narrate a quintessentially right-brain
experience (visuo-spatial, simultaneous or non-temporal, holistic). It is not that
the left hemisphere plays no part in the experience and the formation of
representations during it, or that the right hemisphere is entirely incapable of
language: glossolalia, significantly, is right-brain. Rather, the experience simply
cannot be captured in normal descriptive narrative. 63 Metaphor is the best that
regular language can do.

63 On the relevant functions of the two hemispheres of the brain, see Lex 1979: 124—30, Springer
and Deutsch 1985: 235-9; on 'ineffability', Watts 2002: 185-6; on glossolalia Lex 1979: 128; on
Paul's experience, Shantz 200 1 .

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II 151

I have already stated my hypothesis that the Mithraist's experience of 'getting
to heaven' was not an 'extraordinary' experience in the sense in which Burkert
(1987: 89—114) quite rightly characterizes mystery-cult initiations of the Eleu-
sinian type. Undoubtedly the Mithraic initiations which we see on the side-
benches of the Capua Mithraeum (Vermaseren 1971) and on Side A of the
Mainz ritual vessel (the 'Archery of the Father' — Beck 2000: 149—54) were of
that type, and no doubt the external drama of their enactment was matched by
the internal emotional turmoil and cognitive aporia of the initiand. In Harvey
Whitehouse's bipolar theory of modes of religiosity (Whitehouse 2000; White-
house and Martin 2004; Beck 2004£) such experiences and the rituals which
engender them are manifestations of 'imagistic', as opposed to 'doctrinal',
religion. Their representations are held principally in 'episodic' or 'flashbulb',
as opposed to 'semantic', memory. But knowing your mithraeum as the universe
and experiencing 'the descent and departure of souls' seems to me an experience
of a different sort: not the extraordinary subjective pay-offof a single extraordin-
ary ritual, but a habit of mind — admittedly a very strange habit of mind —
acquired by repetitive 'assimilation to the holy symbols' in numerous acts of
worship and communal festivity played out in the mithraeum, not that different
perhaps from the experience of the regular lay participant in the Christian
eucharist. 64

The expression 'assimilating themselves to the holy symbols' {syndiatithesthai
tois hierois symbolois) is Proclus' phrase from a description of the experience of
initiation {In remp. 2.108.17-30). Burkert uses that description to good effect in
the penultimate paragraph of Ancient Mystery Cults (1987: 113-14), and in that
context the assimilation of the self to the symbols is both sudden and intensely
fraught. But it need not be that way. A Mithraist assimilates himself to the holy
symbols by habituation, by re-cognition, by constant renewal in ritual of the
initiate's compact: to accept that his mithraeum is the universe and that move-
ment there, whether actual or imagined, is cosmic soul-travel.

We need not suppose that fervent belief and strict attention to every phase of
the ritual (whatever it was) were necessary conditions of the Mithraic experience
any more than they are of the Christian's experience in the eucharist. Minds
wander, and in the ritual context the acceptance of a set of conventions ('let this
be so') is what matters, not belief ('this really, really is so'), however strongly
held. 65

The sense of access to some ampler space afforded by ritual is temporary,
provisional, and intermittent. This is not intended as a religious statement about
humanity's limitations in approaching the divine. Rather, it is meant as a factual,
verifiable statement about the experiencing of ritual. Neurocognitively, the
altered state of the participant in ritual is indeed intermittent and inchoate.

64 I offer the example as the only one about which I can speak experientially.

65 Eloquently argued by Roy Rappaport (1999: 107-38).

152 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: II

Exaltation, whether of thought or emotion, is transitory. Getting to heaven is
done by fits and starts, and it is achieved by the 'acceptance that what is being
acted out is already so'. 66 For the initiate, the path to heaven is already there: the
ritual just makes it 'visible and actual'. And that is a matter of commitment to the
symbols and what they symbolize rather than the quality or intensity of inner
experience.

66 Murphy 1979: 320—1. Murphy writes about the mass from the perspective both of a priest and
of a biogenetic structuralist. His perspective is thus ex officio different from a laypersons perspective.
Moreover, his template for experience is prescriptive (how the participants ought to represent access
to heaven to themselves) rather than descriptive (how they do in fact represent it).

Star- Talk: The Symbols of the Mithraic
Mysteries as Language Signs

1. INTRODUCTION: 'STAR-TALK'

In our 'template for a re-description of the mysteries' (Ch. 1, sect. 3) I proposed
that 'the mysteries' common symbolic idiom across axioms, motifs, domains,
structures, and modes is the language of astronomy/ astrology or star-talk' (Prop-
osition F). In Chapter 7 we saw, in the context of the mithraeum, that star-talk is
the logic which articulates the symbols and symbol complexes of the mysteries. It
is now time to look at star-talk more systematically, for just as the form and
function of the mithraeum was literally inaccessible to us without considerable
prior discussion both of symbolism (Chapter 5) and of cognition and represen-
tation (Chapter 6), so it will be impossible properly to consider the mysteries'
other ubiquitous symbolic structure, the tauroctony, without first exploring
star-talk.

First, what star-talk is not: it is not just ancient astronomy and astrology under
a catchy and shorter name. Secondly, what it is, or rather how it should be
construed: it is a language, a language 'talked' by the monuments because that is
the logic by which they are articulated, and for the same reason a language
silently talked by the representation-forming minds of the apprehending initiate.
It is also of course the language spoken (in the usual sense of the word) by
astronomers and astrologers. It has, however, other presumed speakers, and
therein lies its peculiarity. In the culture of antiquity the celestial bodies were
gods, and philosophy endowed them with reason of a very high order. We should
never forget that for the ancients the stars spoke — or the gods spoke through
them. The fact that we no longer consider them either rational or communicative
is of far less importance than the fact that the ancients did.

With the postulate that star-talk is the internal logic of the mysteries' symbol
system in place, we should revisit our 'banner text' (Ch. 1, sect. 1) from Origen's
Contra Celsum (1.12). The 'mysteries' (teletai) of the Persians, says Origen,
'are cultivated rationally (logikos) by the erudite but realized symbolically by
common, rather superficial persons'. My intent all along (and especially in
Chapter 4 on 'doctrine') has been to break down that invidious distinction

154 Star-Talk

between the wise and the vulgar, between those who can 'get it' by reason and
those who can only 'get it' if it — whatever it is — is mediated to them through
symbols. We have established that the mysteries are apprehended in their symbols
by the wise as well as the vulgar — since the mysteries are symbolic constructs,
how else could they be accessed? We shall now see how the mysteries are also
apprehended 'logically' {logikos) by the vulgar as well as the wise. The logic is star-
talk, which the initiate learns, at least as listener, in the apprehension of a symbol
system imbued with that logic.

2. MITHRAIC ICONOGRAPHY AS 'UN LANGAGE A
DECHIFFRER' (R. TURCAN)

Before we can study star-talk as the 'language' of Mithraic symbols and repre-
sentations, I must first meet a formidable theoretical objection. Are we making a
serious category mistake in proposing that symbols can function as language
signs to convey definite meanings?

In studies of Mithraic iconography (and not uncommonly in classical studies
in general) there is an assumption, usually implicit, that symbols do indeed
'mean' and that 'reading' symbols is legitimate hermeneutics, in principle no
more problematic than reading a text. In practice of course it is far from
straightforward, and there is all too often wide disagreement on the meanings
'read'. But disagreement is usually seen as an index of better and worse readings
(my reading is better than your reading) rather than of invalid hermeneutics
(we're both going about it in the wrong way).

We have in fact visited this problem in a different guise as the 'problem of
referents' addressed in Chapter 3; for to ask what a complex of symbols 'means' is
much the same as asking to what it 'refers'. There we looked at the three principal
answers of twentieth-century scholarship (referents in the surrounding culture,
Iranian referents, and celestial referents), and we concluded that none was
entirely satisfactory and that this line of interpretation has reached something
of a dead end. But we did not look at the underlying semantic and semiotic
question: do symbols mean, do they function as language signs?

As an exemplar of the best in that line of interpretation of Mithraic iconog-
raphy we looked at Robert Turcan's article 'Feu et sang: a propos d'un relief
mithriaque'. 1 Turcan is explicit about iconographic symbols as constituting a
language:

C'est un langage a dechifirer, et Ton ne peut guere hasarder de dechif&ement qu'en se
fondant sur la semantique courante des motifs ou des attributs, en fonction de certaines
idees communes au monde greco-romain. (1986: 221)

1 See above, Ch. 4, sect. 2; Ch. 3, sect. 2.

Star- Talk 155

[It is a language to be deciphered, and one can only try deciphering it by relying on the
then current semantics of the motifs or attributes, in terms of certain ideas common to the
Graeco-Roman world.]

Les images sont un langage dont les elements sont faits pour etre compris en fonction
d'un vocabulaire commun au sculpteur et au spectateur de son oeuvre, en Foccurrence au
responsable et aux fideles de la communaute mithriaque. (ibid. 220)

[The images are a language whose elements are made to be understood by means of a
vocabulary common to the sculptor and viewer of his work, in context to the person
responsible and to the faithful.]

Turcan is commendably aware of the implications of treating iconography as a
language, in particular the importance of identifying and characterizing not only
the discourse (first excerpt) but also the language users, those who speak it and
hear it (second excerpt). However, he does not discuss the validity of this entire
hermeneutic approach, for he regards the assimilation of iconography to lan-
guage as quite unproblematic.

3. CAN SYMBOLS FUNCTION AS LANGUAGE SIGNS? THE
QUESTION AS POSED IN CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

To justify the claim that star-talk is the language of the Mithraic mysteries we
must look further afield — to cultural anthropology. As one might anticipate,
in anthropology the question (can symbols function as language signs?) is posed
not just for those visual symbols which constitute an iconography but for entire
symbol systems, manifested in deed and word and artefact, which constitute
cultures and religions. This broader perspective is welcome here, precisely because
our postulated star- talk is multi-media: it is 'spoken' in the symbolic action of ritual
quite as much as in the viewed symbolic structures of the monuments. We have to
accommodate Mithraists pouring honey on each other's hands and, less strikingly
but of no less significance, feasting together on the opposed benches of their
mithraeum.

As one might also expect, our question has been posed mainly in the context
of, or in reaction against, the symbolist interpretations of cultures, notably those
of Mary Douglas, Clifford Geertz, Edmund Leach, and Victor Turner. These
anthropologists (significantly, among the least utilized by classicists) have treated
symbol systems as language-like, but they have not tested the analogy with the
same rigour as the four scholars to be mentioned next.

Frits Staal, Dan Sperber, E. Thomas Lawson, and Robert McCauley (the last
two collaboratively) have addressed explicitly the question of the language status
of rituals and their constituent symbols and symbolic acts. The titles of their

156 Star-Talk

relevant works are illuminating, so we cite them here: Staal 1975: 'The mean-
inglessness of ritual'; Sperber 1975: Rethinking Symbolism; and Lawson and
McCauley 1990: Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture.

In summarizing their positions, I shall not attempt to adjudicate between
them. 2 Justice could not possibly be done in the space available to works of
considerable subtlety and sophistication. Besides, my aim in this chapter is not to
reach a definitive position so much as to test the hypothesis, encapsulated in
Turcan's claim that Mithraic iconography is 'un langage a dechiffrer', that
symbols and symbolic actions are language signs.

Staal's position is the most straightforward and radical. For Staal, ritual is
indeed language-like — perhaps it is even the Ur-language of our species —
because it has rules which are closely analogous to those of syntax. 3 It has,
however, no semantics, since its signs, the performative acts, are without external
meaning: they refer only to themselves. Clearly, the price to be paid for sending
the Mithraic symbol system down that linguistic road would be high indeed!

Staal took as his paradigm case, observed in the field, Vedic ritual and in
particular the Agnicayana, a 3,000-year-old fire ritual. Sperber, at the same time,
was working with the Dorze, a people of southern Ethiopia, and his study, which
confronts the symbols-as-language question more directly than Staal's, covers not
only ritual acts but also the full range of a culture's symbolism manifested in
artefact and word as well as in deed.

Sperber's position is almost the reverse of Staal's. On the one hand, he denies
that symbol systems are languages precisely on the grounds that they fail to meet
certain defining criteria, both formal and functional, for natural languages (1975:
90). In particular, he demonstrates that language conveys meaning' in ways that
symbol systems do not and cannot (ibid. 8-12). Language can do this not only
because the references of its signs are stable and agreed (compare the fluidity and
polysemy of symbols) but also, and more fundamentally, because its signs can be
combined in relationships of 'entailment, paraphrase, contradiction, etc' which
its users understand intuitively how to handle. Symbol systems have no such
'semantic properties'; 4 ergo, they are not languages.

On the other hand, although in a strict linguistic sense Sperber finds symbol-
ism 'meaningless', he considers it far from vacuous. To the contrary, for Sperber
symbol systems are fundamental cognitive systems by which human societies get
to know, to construct mentally, and to represent themselves and the world.

2 For a lengthier survey covering a wider selection of the scholarship (though omitting Sperber),
see Bell 1997: 61—72, esp. 68—72. Lawson and McCauley (1990) build on, rather than in opposition
to, Staal 1975 and Sperber 1975. For that reason their running critique of the two earlier works is
constructive and illuminating.

3 See Lawson and McCauley 1990: 56-9.

4 See Lawson and McCauley 1990: 40, whence the phrases in quotation marks are taken.

Star-Talk 157

Lawson and McCauley, in the most detailed of the three studies, agree with
Staal, against Sperber, that rituals are languages, or rather that they are generated
like utterances according to definable linguistic principles; they disagree with
both Staal and Sperber in that they allow 'meaning' in ritual and in other systems
of symbols; and they agree with Sperber that symbol systems are cognitive
systems, ways to communicate within a culture its particular understanding
and ordering of the world.

4. CROSSING SPERBER'S BAR: THE CASE FOR MITHRAIC
ASTRAL SYMBOLS AS LANGUAGE SIGNS

I shall concentrate here on Dan Sperber's case against symbols as language signs,
principally because it is the most formidable and the most comprehensive. (Staal,
and Lawson and McCauley, both allow at least rituals to function as languages.) 5
If I cannot somehow clear Sperber's bar, I cannot establish star-talk as the
language of the Mithraic mysteries. At the very least I must be able to make a
special case that astral symbolism as deployed in the mysteries meets Sperber's
criteria for languages. This I intend to do, while at the same time agreeing with
Sperber that symbols usually do not function as language signs.

What then are Sperber's criteria for language signs which symbols fail to meet,
and why do I claim an exception for astral symbolism in the Mithraic mysteries?
Equally important, since Sperber maintains that symbols cannot 'mean', what is
it that symbols do which language signs do not do, and can I claim that astral
symbols in the mysteries also continue to perform that function as well as their
postulated star-talk function as language signs?

'Symbols', says Sperber (1975: 85), are not signs. They are not paired with
their interpretations in a code structure. Their interpretations are not meanings.'
'Pairing' of sign and meaning 'in a code structure' is the key criterion: languages
meet it, symbol systems do not. The language 'code' with its pairings is of course
hugely complex. It tells us, for example, not just how to use and comprehend the
signs 'cat' and 'dog' in the construction and recognition of empirically true (and
false) propositions about the animals signified, but also how to make sense out of
a pseudo-propositional exaggeration such as 'it's raining cats and dogs' or the
well-known command in the primary school reader 'see Spot run!' And it guides
us more or less effortlessly to the generation of contextually appropriate new
utterances: 'See Spot chase Ginger up a tree! Spot has treed Ginger!'

5 Lawson and McCauley present a full 'grammar' of ritual in ch. 5: 'Outline of a theory of
religious ritual systems' (1990: 84-136). What is outlined is a 'universal grammar' of the 'intern-
alized' language ('I-language') underlying the 'externalized' languages ('E-languages') of the ritual
practices of particular religions and cultures. For our purposes, it is unnecessary to pursue language
down to this deep Chomskyan level.

158 Star-Talk

Nothing of this sort is enabled by a symbol system. Let us take as an example
the densest and most central complex of symbols in the Mithraic mysteries, the
symbols in the tauroctony. (For the sake of the experiment we must forgo all
astral interpretations except the absolutely unavoidable, for example that the
image of Sol refers to the Sun). One looks in vain for the systematic deployment
of these symbols ('dog', 'snake', 'scorpion', 'raven', etc.) as signs in other
utterances, whether in the Mithraic mysteries or elsewhere; and one looks equally
in vain for the shared and accessible code which regulates the use of the symbol
system and enables new speech acts in the language. 6

Only by metaphoric licence do symbols mean. This is the metaphor which
allows us to attribute meaning to anything and everything 'from the meaning of
life to the meaning of the colour of leaves in autumn' (Sperber 1975: 83).
However, 'the attribution of sense is an essential aspect of symbolic development
in our culture. Semiologism is one of the bases of our ideology' (ibid. 83-4,
Sperber's emphasis). The Dorze, the people of southern Ethiopia studied by
Sperber, 'know nothing of it'. For them, 'the question "What does that mean?"
{awa yusiT) can only be asked about a word, a sentence, a text or a directly
paraphrasable behaviour, such as a nod' (ibid. 83).

However, one should not read too much into Sperber's assertion of the
meaninglessness of symbols. He has merely disembarrassed symbolism of a
language metaphor which he felt did more harm than good, thereby freeing it
to be construed for what it is — here too I agree with him — a cognitive system.
Sperber's particular target, or rather the subject of his rescue operation, is Levi-
Straussian structuralism:

when we strip the work of Levi-Strauss of the semiological burden with which he has
chosen to encumber it, we will then realize that he was the first to propose the funda-
mentals of an analysis of symbolism which was finally freed from the absurd idea that
symbols mean. The argument may be summarized in this way: if symbols had a meaning,
it would be obvious enough. All these learned terms — signifier and signified, paradigm
and syntagm, code, mytheme [ — ] will not for long hide the following paradox: that if
Levi-Strauss thought of myths as a semiological system, the myths thought themselves in
him and without his knowledge, as a cognitive system. (1975: 84)

6 It is true that certain elements of the tauroctony are also deployed in othet compositions. For
example, in the Triet tock-bitth (V985) the dog, the snake, and the raven are witnesses of the birth
of the god just as they are witnesses of the bull-killing. Or consider anothet example, taken from
outside the mysteries: in a mosaic from the Antioch area the four subsidiary animals of the
tauroctony are found (together with a centipede, a panther, a ttident, a sword, and an ithyphallic
dwarf) surrounding the evil eye, presumably to ward it off (Levi 1947: 33—4, pi. IVc). The point is
not that symbols cannot be redeployed and r ecombined — obviously they can — but that there are no
t ules which ate intuitively brought into play by a 'speaker' and which can be explicitly displayed by a
'grammarian', for getting from one 'utterance' to another. If there ate ptinciples involved, they are
those of 'listing'; and listing, though a complex business semantically (fot listing within Mithtaism,
see Gotdon 1998), is grammatically primitive. It functions solely by parataxis: one symbol, another
symbol, anothet symbol . . .

Star-Talk 159

'Evocation' is Sperber's key term for the work done by symbols. While language
signs mean, symbols evoke. And to say that symbols evoke is really just another way
of speaking of the apprehension of symbols by the cognizing agent when the
object of cognition is made the grammatical subject. The initiate apprehends
whatever it is that the symbol evokes. An ancient exegete probably would have
used the verb ainittesthai, to 'intimate' or 'speak in riddles {ainigmatd) about'.

Traditionally hermeneutics has been largely a matter of explicating what
symbols 'evoke' or 'intimate'. A fine early modern example, very germane to
our study, is the explication appended to the drawing of the Ottaviano Zeno
tauroctony (V335) 7 by the sixteenth-century collector Pighius. There, in the key
to the symbols, we learn that the composition is an allegory of agriculture and its
necessary virtues. For instance, our four animals participate as follows:

(I) Corvus qui diligentiam significat (The raven which signifies diligence)
(O) Canis quo amor et fides [significantur] (The dog by which love and

loyalty are signified)
(P) Serpens quo providentia [significatur] (The snake by which providence

is signified)
(S) Scorpio qui generationem [significat] (The scorpion which signifies

generation)

It is easy to laugh at such an interpretation. But while we can be fairly sure that
the founders of the mysteries did not compose the tauroctony with these exact
equations to hand, who is to say that no practising Mithraist ever construed his
icon with thoughts of farming, its seasons, and its moral values consciously in
mind? To the contrary, it is entirely probable that explications along these lines
were both given and received.

Moreover, provided that one does not insist on a single exclusive set of one-for-
one meanings, exploring what symbols evoke, individually or in combinations, is
entirely legitimate. 8 It is likely, for example, that the tauroctony 's metamorphosis
of the bull's tail into an ear of wheat evokes, and was intended to evoke,
agriculture. These and similar evocations were explored by Luther Martin
(1994) in a study aimed not at deciphering some fixed meaning injected into
the icon by its originators but at tracking and relating the cluster of ideas about
sacrifice to which we may suppose the representation of the bull-killing gives
expression.

The method is unobjectionable, and in fact almost all modern scholars employ
it to some extent, for it merely harnesses known features of the culture of classical
antiquity, where self-evidently relevant, to the interpretation of the icon. 9 But it

7 Vermaseren 1978: 7-9, pis. XI, XII.

8 Richard Gordon's 'Reality, evocation and boundary in the Mysteries of Mithras' (1980^) is
explicitly Sperberian in method and intent (note 'evocation' in the title).

9 See above, Ch. 3, sect. 2: 'Referents in the surrounding culture?'

1 60 Star- Talk

does not treat the interpreted symbols as the signs of a language, except by
metaphor ('the language of allegory', etc.), for it does not postulate signs paired
with their meanings in a publicly accessible code operative wherever the signs are
deployed.

Unlike symbols, language signs are paired with their interpretations in a code
structure' (Sperber 1975: 85). The language code has a set grammar and a set
semantics transparent to all users and accessible to anyone who wants to learn the
language. There are no arcana, though the grammar and semantics generally
operate below the level of conscious manipulation. (If you have to think about
them while speaking, you have not yet acquired full competence to the standard
of a native speaker.) Finally the language code offers the limitless potential for
generating new utterances within the set grammar. Languages, in other words,
are recursive.

I must now make the case that Mithraic astral symbols meet Sperberian criteria
for language signs. Let us take as our first example the four attendant animals at
the bull-killing, whose allegorical 'significances' were explicated by Pighius
(above): the raven, the dog, the serpent, and the scorpion. The astral interpret-
ations of the tauroctony which we reviewed in Chapter 7 (sect. 4) read
these symbols as signs for the constellations Corvus, Canis Minor, Hydra, and
Scorpius.

Now the question, it is important to understand, is not whether the sculpted
and painted images of the animals in the tauroctony are or are not symbols of the
respective constellations. That question I now regard as settled: lingering sceptics
are invited to read my article 'Astral symbolism in the tauroctony: a statistical
demonstration of the extreme improbability of unintended coincidence in the
selection of elements in the composition' (Beck 2004c: 251-65 = ch. 12). The
animal images do indeed symbolize, signify, denote, refer to — whatever term you
wish — the constellations; the tauroctony was composed with that intent in mind
by the person(s) who commissioned and designed it; and the initiates so appre-
hended it. The tauroctony is, among other things, a star-chart. Insofar as the
astral interpreters were mistaken, it was not their reading of the tauroctony as
star-chart which was at fault but the implausible identities for the tauroctonous
Mithras which they then claimed the star-chart warranted (ibid. 235-49).

The mere fact that there is a Raven constellation, a Dog constellation (actually
two: Canis Major and Canis Minor), a Snake constellation (actually three: Hydra,
Draco, Serpens), and a Scorpion constellation (Scorpius) does not in itself imply
that some quasi-language is operative in the tauroctony. That hypothesis only
becomes plausible when one observes (1) that all the standard elements in the
composition of the tauroctony have their celestial referents (above, Ch. 5, sect. 4);
(2) that the constellations represented were not picked at random from the sphere
of the fixed stars but were chosen because they were contiguous in
an astronomically definable and meaningful area of the heavens (Beck 2004c:
262—4); (3) that astral symbolism, as we have already seen, is not confined to the

Star- Talk 161

tauroctony but pervades the Mithraic mysteries in their entirety, including the
other two great constructs of the mysteries, the grade hierarchy under the seven
tutelary planets (Beck 1988: 1-11) and the mithraeum as 'cosmic image' (see the
preceding chapter). The language of star- talk, if language it is, is the idiom of
the mysteries, not just of the icons. We should note too that it is a performative
language: it is spoken, for example, in the enactment of the Procession of the Sun-
Runner now known to us from the Mainz ritual vessel (Beck 2000: 157—63).

The second of the three considerations above requires elaboration. If it were
the case that the selected constellations came from anywhere and everywhere in
the heavens, then one might reasonably conclude that they were present as astral
symbols for no other purpose than to give a certain 'cosmic' flavour to the scene
and/or that other, non-astral reasons drove the selection. 10 But the selected
constellations do in fact all fall within the same defined area of the heavens,
and that area is astronomically meaningful as a section of the celestial sphere. In
other words, the selected constellations are not just contiguous; they also form a
block about which one can say something astronomically interesting beyond
simply describing its extent and location: it consists of a band of zodiacal
constellations extending in a semicircle (neither more nor less) from Taurus
eastward to Scorpius together with the southern paranatellonta of the central
part of that semicircle. (Paranatellonta are the constellations on either side of the
zodiac which 'rise alongside' zodiacal constellations.)

The intent of that selection does not immediately concern us. What does
concern us is that there is an astronomical logic at work, just as there is an
astronomical logic at work in the plan and ritual use of the mithraeum. This logic
is our 'star- talk.

Now language signs do not normally convey meaning in isolation from each
other or by mere accumulation (except in lists). They function in relation to each
other. And so it is with star-talk signs. Again, let us take our examples directly
from the tauroctony. The bull signifies Taurus and the scorpion Scorpius. In
representing the bull and the scorpion the tauroctony is not just saying 'Taurus!'
and 'Scorpius!' as independent exclamations. The uttering of those two 'words'

10 The most obvious non-astral reason would be that the raven, the snake, the dog, and the
scorpion are there in the composition because in the bull-killing venture Mithras was accompanied
by a raven, a snake, a dog, and a scorpion. In the sense that the icon constructs the story, this is true,
but only tautologously. One has to ask if there was a prior story which required representation of the
animals in their own right and not as constellation symbols. Perhaps so; but if there was, the strange,
surreal quality of the scene suggests an allegorical narrative. In a study of the subject, the emperor
Julian rightly states that 'incongruity' {to apemphainori) is the hallmark of allegory {Or. 7. 217 C,
222 C— D). The cluttered, over-attended scene of the bull-killing is nothing if not 'incongruous'.

However, if the attendant animals (not to mention Sol, Luna, and the torchbearers) are elements
in an allegory, surely it has to be a celestial allegory; for only in the heavens and with celestial
identities can that motley crew of witnesses be rendered congruous. But to treat the animals as
symbols in a celestial allegory only returns us to the question: 'an allegory of what?' Rather than once
again searching fruitlessly for allegorical meaning in the astral symbols of the tauroctony, we would
do better to return to our exploration of astral symbols as language signs throughout the mysteries.

162 Star-Talk

together necessarily brings into play the relationship between the two things
signified, the two constellations/signs of the zodiac named. That relationship is
one of 'opposition' in the sense of 'opposite each other' on the celestial sphere and
on the ecliptic/zodiac.

The opposition of Taurus and Scorpius is not a contingent matter, something
which could be otherwise, like for example the opposition of two planets at a
particular moment in time. Although it originated in the fact that the group of
stars likened to a bull is on the other side of the heavens from the group of stars
likened to a scorpion, with the introduction of the 360° zodiac of twelve equal
signs the opposition of Taurus and Scorpius develops into a definitional truth:
Taurus is the second 30° sector of the ecliptic/zodiac (longitude 30°-60°),
Scorpius the eighth (210°-240°). Consequently, nothing except a change in
the underlying astronomical convention can ever disconfirm the relationship
'Taurus is in opposition to Scorpius'. It is part of the grammar of star-talk.

Now Taurus lies at the east end of the band of constellations represented in the
tauroctony and Scorpius at the west end. From the opposition of these two signs,
it follows that the tauroctony represents one half of the zodiac, neither more nor
less; and from the signs/constellations actually represented it follows that the
semicircle from Taurus eastward to Scorpius is represented, not the semicircle
from Scorpius eastward to Taurus. In terms of the design of the tauroctony, all
these choices could have been different. That is not the point. What matters is
that once the decision has been taken to deploy certain star-talk signs rather than
others, what the signs mean and say in collaboration with each other at the literal
level is fixed and unalterable. It cannot be otherwise. It is also non-esoteric (not
one thing to the wise and another to the vulgar) and accessible to all competent
speakers, readers, and hearers.

Prima facie at least we have a case that astral symbols can, and in the Mithraic
mysteries do, function as language signs. They meet Sperber's criterion of being
'paired with their interpretations in a code structure' (1975: 85). The 'code
structure', star-talk's grammar, is the strict geometry — or rather uranometry —
of basic Hellenistic astronomy. Star-talk is thus extremely rich in necessary
relationships — opposition is a good example — which serve as the grammatical
warp and weft, as it were, to sustain the intricate knotted patterns of its
utterances. Clearly, too, star-talk meets the criterion of public accessibility. It is
not an idiolect, a private language of the Mithraic mysteries alone. Finally, it
is recursive. One can generate new star-talk utterances indefinitely, as a glance at
the output of horoscopal astrology will show.

One question which I asked above remains to be answered. If astral symbols
function as language signs, do they forfeit their powers of evocation in the same
context? They do not: nothing prevents a Pighius (above) from hearing the
evocations of 'diligence', 'love and loyalty', 'providence', and 'generation' from
the raven, the dog, the snake, and the scorpion respectively; and nothing prevents
a Martin (1994) from hearing evocations of the triumphant virtues of the Roman

Star-Talk 163

soldier-farmer in the tauroctony's collective symbolism. Certainly, I find the
latter's interpretation much more persuasive than the former's. But since symbols
do not carry a set complement of designer-approved evocations, neither inter-
pretation can be endorsed as uniquely right and neither interpretation can be
dismissed as objectively wrong. What is certain, however, is that the evocative
powers of the symbols are in no way compromised or diminished by their other
function as star-talk language signs. Evocation and star-talk meaning often
reinforce one another. For example, the scorpion in the tauroctony evokes
'generation' in that it fastens on the genitals of the dying bull, and in star-talk
the same figure means the sign/constellation of Scorpius. The link between
evocation and meaning is reinforced by the assignment of Scorpius to the genitals
in the astrological system by which each of the twelve signs of the zodiac was
assigned to a part of the human body. Those relationships between sign and body
part are of course star-talk phrases. They are among the necessary truths of the
language.

While evocations are finally subjective matters ('hey, it works for me' is
irrefutable), star-talk meanings and the relationships between its signs are not.
Taurus and Scorpius are opposed signs. If you read or hear 'quadrature', you are
simply mistaken: you are misreading or mishearing.

This does not mean that the tauroctony or any other symbolic structure in the
Mithraic mysteries can be interpreted in an objective, straightforward, and
definitive way simply because it speaks in star-talk. Star-talk, it cannot be
emphasized too strongly, is not the key to the encrypted secrets of the tauroctony.
It simply lets us read, by correctly apprehending the signs in context, the
language in which the tauroctony is written. Star-talk, like natural languages, is
'medium, not message'.

I shall not be presenting anything like a comprehensive grammar of star-talk.
In any case, how the language works is best seen in context; so the proper place
for more on star-talk grammar will be our penultimate chapter on the tauroct-
ony. However, a few general points about the language still need to be made
before we turn to the important topic of how the ancients themselves construed
this celestial language.

First, as is usual with languages, star-talk admits both homonyms and syn-
onyms. This is the linguistic equivalent of the polysemy of symbols, a matter we
have already raised. The sign 'snake', for example, can signify in star-talk any one
of three different serpentine constellations: Hydra, Draco, and Serpens. 11 That it
signifies Hydra in the tauroctony is clear by context: Hydra fits into the band of
constellations signified by the animals; the other two celestial snakes do not. By

11 The three serpentine constellations are not the only star- talk meanings of 'snake'. From its
setting alongside half the zodiac on the ceiling of the Ponza mithraeum, with its head next to Leo
and the tip of its tail next to Aquarius, it is evident that it there signifies the nodes of the lunar orbit,
personified and subsequently attested as caput and cauda draconis (Beck 1976*?, 1978).

164 Star-Talk

the same token, the sign 'dog' in relation to all the other constellation signs in the
contiguous group signifies Canis Minor, but in other relationships signifies Canis
Major and its lucida, Sirius the Dog Star.

Secondly, star-talk as spoken, for example, in and by the Mithraic tauroctony
differs from natural languages in that it is not constrained by linearity. In the
natural languages the signs are deployed in a sequence: a temporal sequence in
the spoken language, a spatial sequence in the written language. Moreover, the
flow of signs is unidirectional in both the giving and the receiving: one cannot
hear in reverse, and while one can read in reverse it literally makes no sense. Star-
talk, however, is non-linear and it is unconstrained by sequence and direction. In
the tauroctony, for example, one can read and apprehend the meaning of the
constellation signs 'at a glance' synoptically. One may also read from right to left
or from left to right; either way is meaningful: if you read from left to right you
will be tracking the daily motion of all celestial bodies westward; if you read from
right to left you will be tracking the peculiar motions of the Sun, the Moon, and
the planets eastward. Lastly, since the tauroctony 's star-talk utterances are made
simultaneously, not sequentially in real time, the same sign can carry double or
multiple meanings simultaneously. Thus the dog can signify Canis Minor and
Canis Major simultaneously without contradiction; likewise the bull can signify
Taurus and the Moon simultaneously without contradiction. Texts in star-talk,
one might say, are many-stranded, hence denser and more convoluted than texts
in natural languages, although the actual lexicon of star-talk, the inventory of its
signs, is much more meagre than the lexicons of the natural languages.

5. STAR-TALK: ANCIENT VIEWS CONCERNING ITS
SPEAKERS, DISCOURSES, SEMIOTICS, AND SEMANTICS

Consider what a demonstration of God's power the celestial signs (ta
ourania semata) furnish, for they are all stamped (entetypomenon) from the
beginning to the end of time on the heavens, the worthy book of God.

(Origen, Philocalia 23.20, Junod 1976: 200).

The gospel . . . written on the tablets of heaven and read by all those
considered worthy of the knowledge of all things (to euangelion . . . to en
tais plaxi tou ouranou graphomenon kai hypo panton ton exiomenon tes ton
holon gnoseos anaginoskomenon) .

(Origen, Commentary on John 1.68, p. 94 Blanc)

I have chosen these epigraphs from Origen for a number of reasons. First, they
are intended to forestall the objection that I am inventing a special language of
astral symbolism, manifested solely in the Mithraic mysteries, in order to 'solve' a

Star-Talk 165

hermeneutic problem peculiar to those mysteries alone. To the contrary, I shall
demonstrate that treating the celestial bodies as the signs in a language was not
uncommon in antiquity; hence, that 'star-talk' in Mithraic symbolism is but a
particular case of a much more widespread convention which the ancients
themselves explicitly recognized as a language. Whether there 'really' is such a
language is beside the point. As the ancients well appreciated, languages do not
exist apart from their speakers. Conversely, if you can identify sign-users and the
signs by which they appear to communicate, you are obviously justified in
postulating a language.

The epigraphs also let us dispel any residual misunderstanding that by 'star-
talk we mean astronomical and astrological discourse under a catchy (and
economical) new term. Astronomical and astrological discourse, as preserved
for us in the ancient texts, may well be second-order star-talk, but the primary
language is conveyed in and by the celestial bodies themselves and their motions.
In star-talk, the visible heavens are the medium of communication, the 'book',
and the contents of heaven are the 'signs imprinted' on it. This is no metaphor:
Origen clearly intends that everything is to be taken literally.

Why, though, do we go first to a Christian source to illuminate star-talk in a
pagan religion? The answer is that in the Christian sources the language of the
stars is a topic addressed far more explicitly and in detail than in the pagan
sources. 12 In particular, there is an intense concern with the speakers/writers and
audience/readers of star-talk, in other words with its language community;
likewise with the moral and spiritual status of the language itself and its speakers:
God-talk or devil-talk? Among pagans, such concerns are usually absent or at
least not as urgent. They had no motive, then, to develop an explicit semiology of
star-talk. They could and did take the stars as signifiers for granted.

Another reason for looking first at Christian views on star-talk is the Chris-
tians' concern — and paganism's relative lack of concern — with text itself as the
vehicle of ultimate meaning and value. It was natural for Christianity, as it
developed and interpreted its own scriptural canon, to evaluate other sign
systems in terms of text and the language in which text is communicated.

There are two passages of scripture which absolutely compel the Christian
exegete to treat the stars as signs and thus to entertain at least a rudimentary
semiology in order to explicate them. The first passage is Genesis 1: 14-19, the
creation of the Sun, Moon, and stars on the fourth day. God's stated purpose for
the celestial bodies is unambiguous: 'God said, "Let there be lights in the vault of
heaven to separate day from night, and let them serve as signs both for festivals and
for seasons and years".' The purpose of the celestial bodies is thus to serve as
measures of time and as indicators of the proper times for celebrating festivals. Any

12 On the topic of early Christian attitudes to astrology I wish to acknowledge my debt to
Timothy Hegedus, whose doctoral dissertation, published in 2005, I supervised.

1 66 Star- Talk

thoughtful pagan, incidentally, would endotse this definition of the function of
the celestial bodies.

The second passage is from the Christian New Testament, the well-known
story of the 'Star of Bethlehem' and the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus (Matt.
2: 1—12). In performance, if not in name, the Magi (tnagoi) are astrologers, and
the story presupposes, in this instance at least, both the validity and the respect-
ability of astrology. The Magi read the sign aright: the Star indicates the 'child
who is born to be king of the Jews' (2: 2). How Christian exegetes reconciled the
story with their general hostility to astrology and astrologers is another story. 13
But whatever solution one arrives at, constructing a semiology of sorts to cope
with it is unavoidable.

Starting, then, with the Christian authors, we shall attempt to reconstruct
something of the semiotics of star-talk in the ancient world. We shall look
particularly at star-talk's postulated language communities, both explicit and
implicit; also at the extraordinarily varied constructions placed on the language's
moral status, its intent, its speech acts, and its signs.

6. ORIGEN'S VIEW: 'HEAVENLY WRITINGS' AND THEIR
ANGELIC READERS 14

Just as in our books certain things are written for our understanding, such as
the creation and other mysteries, and other things such as the instructions
and commandments of God, so that knowing them we may take action,
even so it is possible that the heavenly writings (ta ourania grammata) which
the angels and divine powers know how to read well contain both things to
be perused by the angels and functionaries of God, so that they may delight
in their knowledge, and also instructions which they may receive and act
upon.

(Origen, Philocalia 23.20, Junod 1976: 200-2)

Our second epigraph from Origen leads us further into the question of star-talk's
language community. Origen's answer is somewhat unusual, although in

13 One which we do not have to tell here. It is well explored by Hegedus (2000: 174-93, 268—
73), who emphasizes Tertullian's solution {De Idolatria 9.4), which was 'to make a simple temporal
distinction in the history of astrology, to separate "those magi" from "today's astrologers": "In fact
that science [astrology] was only permitted until the Gospel, in order that after Christ's birth no one
should henceforth interpret a person's nativity from the stars" ' (Hegedus 2000: 269). Hegedus also
shows that some respect was accorded even to star-worship as a praeparatio evangelii (ibid. 283—5):
e.g. Clement, Stromateis 6.110.3: 'He [God] gave the Sun, the Moon, and the stars for religious
observation (eis threskeian); God made them for the gentiles {tois ethnesin) ... so that they would not
become complete atheists and so be completely corrupted.' Better a living star than a dead idol, at
least before the coming of Christ.

14 See Hegedus 2000: 283-90, and as background Scott 1991.

Star- Talk 1 67

identifying supernatural users he is typical of Christian thinkers in antiquity.
Origen's readers of celestial writings are angels, divine powers (dynameis theiai),
functionaries (leitourgoi) of God. The writer is God himself, the creator and
deployer of the signs. From the receiver's perspective, then, the text and the
language itself are 'read only'. God has 'burnt' the text into the CD; it is
unalterable by other users.

Despite the supernatural speakers, Origen's linguistics have a strangely mod-
ern, Chomskyan ring to them. Rather than limiting inquiry to the syntax and
semantics of explicit 'sentences' (which he would in any case consider beyond
human comprehension), Origen concentrates on the speakers and functions of
star-talk. One could say of Origen what the authors of an introductory text on
Chomsky's 'revolution in linguistics' say in their first paragraph: 'he was propos-
ing to draw conclusions from the nature of language to the nature of the . . . lan-
guage user' (Smith and Wilson 1979: 9).

Note that Origen's star-talk is not a language whose sole or even primary
function is to communicate facts by way of true propositions. Just as our
scriptures contain not only things that we should know about ('such as creation
and certain other mysteries') but also things that we should act on (i.e. God's
commandments), so, Origen claims, the heavenly writings contain both orders
for the supernatural powers to execute and (rather charmingly) things to delight
them {hina euphrainontai ginoskontes) — God's video show for his angels, as it
were. This emphasis on the performative function of language is echoed in
modern studies of ritual and myth. 15

Origen accommodates within his model of star- talk the misunderstanding and
deliberate misrepresentation of the utterances of the language by fallen angels.
This, as we shall see, accounts for the hit-and-miss record of astrology — and for
certain other things more sinister. But before we look at Origen's account of
celestial misinformation and disinformation, we should turn to the altogether
more sombre views of Augustine on the language of the stars.

7. AUGUSTINE'S VIEW: STAR-TALK AS A DEMONIC
LANGUAGE CONTRACT 16

For Origen, at least in the Philocalia, star-talk was angelic. For Augustine, as for
most Christian theologians in antiquity, it was diabolic. Augustine's target was
what we would call 'astrology', the reading of heavenly signs for predictive ends.
For Christians, astrology posed an urgent problem. Especially if the celestial signs
are viewed as causal, not merely foretelling terrestrial events but actually bringing
them about, then man's free will is diminished and the omnipotence of God

15 e.g. Bell 1997: 68-83.

16 On this topic and on Augustine's semiology in general, see R. A. Markus's essays (esp. nos. 1,
4, and 5) in Signs and Meanings: World and Text in Ancient Christianity (1996).

168 Star-Talk

infringed. 17 The solution was not only to refute the validity of astrology and its
techniques but also to demonize it — literally Star-talk was the talk of devils. If
you started talking it, you found yourself keeping some very bad company
indeed. Wittingly or unwittingly you had entered a chat-room which a prudent
and pious person would want at all costs to avoid.

In Christian Doctrine (De doctrina Christiana), when discussing astrology
(2.21.32.78-24.37.95), Augustine concentrates less on the signs themselves
than on the speakers and the speech acts, and in this respect he mirrors Origen,
though his conclusions are diametrically opposite. For Augustine the danger of
star-talk is that it traps the astrologer-speaker by a binding contract in a com-
munity of language users whose other members are demonic.

This is not just a matter of guilt by association. The contract is built into the
language convention itself. 18 Here we touch on that element in the De doctrina
Christiana which is nowadays most valued, Augustine's theory of signs and of
language. 19 Signs are of two sorts, 'natural' (signa naturalid) and 'given' (signa
data). In natural signs there is a causative link between the sign and what is
signified. Smoke, in this sense, is a sign of fire. With given signs, in contrast, there
is no such link. It is purely by convention that a particular sign signals a particular
signified. The convention is an agreement among a group of users to employ a set
of signs with fixed meanings understood by all in the group. For humans the
principal conventions are those of the various natural (in the modern sense)
languages, communicated in speech and writing. Those who use the set of agreed
signs constitute the language community. Whether they wish it or not, then,
astrologers have enrolled themselves in a demonic community simply by using
astral signs according to the conventions of star-talk. The stars have no prior
meaning in and of themselves; they acquire meaning because certain individuals,
demonic and human, agree to treat them as signs.

[Of language in general:] All these meanings (significationes) , then, derive their effect on
the mind from each individual's agreement with a particular convention (pro sua cuiusque
societatis consensione) . As this agreement varies, so does their effect. People did not agree to
use them because they were meaningful; rather, they became meaningful because
people agreed to use them (nee ideo consensuerunt in eas homines quia iam valebant ad
significationem, sed ideo valent quia consensuerunt in eas). [Of the language of astral signs
and other modes of divination:] Likewise the signs by which this deadly agreement with
demons (perniciosa daemonum societas) is achieved have an effect that is in proportion to
each individual's attention to them. (De doctrina Christiana 2.24.37.94, trans. Green
1995: 101)

Augustine here differentiates implicitly between stars as things and stars as
language signs. This distinction comes into sharper focus at a later point in the

17 On early Christian opposition to astrology and the polemical arguments used against it see
Hegedus 2000: 10-173.

18 SeeMarkus 1996: 31, 108-10, 135-8. 19 See Markus 1996: 1-35, 105-24.

Star-Talk 169

De doctrina Christiana (2.29 .46) when he discusses the stars as objects of
knowledge and teaching.

Here, knowledge of the physical heavens and their contents is not of much
interest to Augustine. He is frank and straightforward with his reason: since
secular scientific knowledge is useful only insofar as it enables biblical hermen-
eutics, and since the Bible makes but scant reference to the heavenly bodies, the
discipline of astronomy has little to offer the Christian scholar. Such interest as it
has for Augustine is limited to calendrics, the determination of the date of Easter
being the sole and obvious example given of the discipline's practical utility.

This calendric bias does, however, lead Augustine to make some perceptive
remarks on the peculiar power of astronomy to make accurate and verifiable
predictions — not of course the predictions of astrology (that being the semio-
logical abuse of the discipline), but factual and, as we would characterize them,
scientific predictions about the future positions of the heavenly bodies them-
selves. Moreover, what can be projected into the future can be retrojected into the
past. We know where the planets were on a given historical date just as securely as
we know where they will be at a date in the future. The celestial past thus belongs
to the domain of history, the record of fact which, because it is immutably so and
not otherwise, bears the seal of God.

8. ORIGEN AGAIN: THE DEMONIC MISCONSTRUCTION

OF STAR-TALK

Origen, we saw (above, sect. 6), postulates a language of the stars spoken by God
for the delight and instruction of his angels and other superhuman powers. The
problem with this language for us as humans is that we may perhaps overhear
utterances in star-talk, but we will not understand them properly, precisely
because they are not meant for us at all. We are not their intended audience.
By definition, then, the semantics of star-talk on this model are irrecoverable. We
can identify the language community and we can grasp several other important
facts about both the community and the language: first, that we ourselves are
necessarily outside that community (our phenotype not equipped to receive star-
talk); secondly, that communication within the language community flows in
one direction only (from God to his angels); and thirdly, that the language's
signs/words are the stars and its utterences the configurations and motions of the
stars. But of the utterances spoken in star-talk we comprehend nothing for
certain and never will, at least in our present sinful and mortal condition. 20

20 Origen allows that 'holy souls rid of the present bondage' may indeed read the celestial writing
{Philocalia 23.20, p. 200 Junod). In Contra Celsum 5.13 he predicts that the stars too, as part of
material creation, will themselves be freed from the 'futility' (mataiotes, quoting Rom. 8: 20) of the
present dispensation.

170 Star-Talk

What does get through to us, in Origen's account, is a certain amount of
celestial misinformation and disinformation. Origen's semiology of star-talk is
here extraordinarily ingenious in that it elegantly accommodates both defective
utterances and lies. The utterances he must account for within his model are the
predictions of astrologers and their statements about astral causation. Here is
where the demons make their entrance, though the scenario is fundamentally
different from Augustine's. Rather than inventing star-talk in a corrupt compact
with human astrologers, they mis-remember the language which they had once
known in their prelapsarian state as angels. They are still language users, but
incompetent ones. Hence the hit-and-miss quality of astrology, as they and the
astrologers struggle to communicate in a semantically and grammatically inad-
equate pidgin.

More subtly, the demons use star-talk to tell lies, to convey not misinformation
but disinformation. The signs of the language in the heavens are of course
beyond their reach, but the events on earth which they are thought to signify
are not. So a clever demon can, for instance, manipulate the onset of epilepsy to
coincide with the phases of the Moon in such a way as to suggest a causal or
indicative relation. 21 Thus, implicit in Origen's full account there is not one
language of the stars, but two: the heavenly bodies themselves speak — or rather,
act as signifiers in — good star-talk, while demons and astrologers speak bad star-
talk. The former is veridical but unknowable (to us); the latter is all too plausible
and comprehensible, but it is semantically deceptive. Break the code, if you will,
but remember that the deciphered meanings are a pack of lies.

9. STARS TALKING THEOLOGY: THE 'HERETICAL'

INTERPRETERS OF ARATUS AS REPORTED BY

HIPPOLYTUS {REFUTATIO 4.46-50)

We turn next to a marginal sect discussed by the heresiologist Hippolytus of
Rome. What is fascinating about this group is that not only did its members read
the heavens as a text with both literal and figurative meanings, but they also
appealed for legitimacy at both the exegetic and interpretive levels to a second,
terrestrial text which is both real and extant: the Phaenomena, an astronomical
poem composed by Aratus of Soli in the third century bce.

In attacking these 'heretics', Hippolytus has this to say {Ref. 4.46.2):

In order that what I am going to say may appear clearer to my readers, I have decided to
discuss the thoughts of Aratus on the disposition (diatheseos) of the stars in heaven, how
certain people allegorize those thoughts by transferring the celestial likenesses [i.e. the

21 Thus Origen on the healing of the epileptic boy in Matt. 17: 14—21 (Comm. in Matt. 13.6).
Common terrestrial language underwrites the connection, for epilepsy in Greek is 'lunacy': as the
father explains to Jesus (v. 15), his son 'has been made lunatic' (seleniazetai).

Star-Talk 171

constellation figures] to what is said in holy scripture (hos tines eis ta hypo ton graphon
eiremena apeikonizontes auta allegorousi) . . . showing a strange marvel, how 22 their own
sayings have been 'catasterized' (xenon thauma endeiknymenoi hos katesterismenon ton hyp'
auton legomenon) .

The semiology of the Arateans 23 (as we may call them) resembles Origen's, in
that appeal is made to two sacred texts. Origen postulates the Bible on earth for
humans and the stars in heaven for angels. The readership differs for each text, the
celestial text being illegible and incomprehensible to terrestrial humanity. The
Arateans too postulate both an earthly text, the Phaenomena of Aratus, and a
celestial text, the visible heavens, the actual 'phenomena' which gave Aratus the
title for his work. But the readership of these two texts is the same, humans
searching for understanding and salvation.

Hippolytus characterizes the Aratean method as 'allegorizing', of which it is
certainly a form. However, it is important to distinguish this form of allegory in
which the signifiers are real, actual, related entities (in this case recognized
groupings of the stars of heaven) from allegories constructed ad hoc from fictional
stories or make-believe situations. A good example of the latter class of allegory is
that imputed to Homer by Porphyry in an essay on which we have frequently
drawn in the present study, On the Cave of the Nymphs in the Odyssey (De antro) . 24
The De antro is an extended philosophical and theological explication of the cave
described by Homer in Odyssey 13.102-12, the cave near which the sleeping hero
is set on his return to his native land. So 'full of obscurities' 25 is Homer's
description that we cannot believe such a cave ever existed or could exist in the
actual world. Obviously, then, since it is neither a real cave to be found on Ithaca
nor yet a realistic fiction, 26 Homer must intend something different. That
something can only be allegory. Homer's description is indeed bizarre from a
naturalistic point of view, so one has every sympathy with Porphyry's premise, if
not with his solution.

Unlike the invented elements of allegories of that sort, the elements of the
Arateans' story, the stars of heaven, are real and their disposition a fact accessible
to all who care to gaze up at them on a clear night. 'Don't believe us, say the

22 Or, following Marcovich's emendation of hos to hosan, 'as if.

23 It is not necessary to suppose that the Arateans actually existed as an identifiable sect. These
unnamed and otherwise unattested heretics may be no more than a fictional construct for Hippo-
lytus to locate the teachings of an anonymous Gnostic writer and to furnish notional converts back
to orthodoxy. Since we are not concerned with the sect itself but with its implied semiology, a lone
author will support my case just as well.

24 Allegory, and the allegorical interpretation of Homer in particular, was very much a Neopla-
tonic project. See Robert Lamberton's study, Homer the Theologian (1986, esp. 66—76, 119—33,
318—24). The allegorization of Gteek (and Latin) texts is paralleled by the allegorization of Hebrew
texts, first by Jews, Philo in particular, and subsequently by Christians.

25 Asapheion (De antro 4).

26 As Lamberton points out (1986: 125—6), Porphyry somewhat undercuts his own argument in
De antro A by finding a possible candidate for the Ithacan cave in the works of an earlier geographer,
Artemidorus of Ephesus.

1 72 Star- Talk

Arateans (in effect), 'believe the evidence of your own eyes. Read what you see in
the book of heaven, and if you really want to understand what you read, listen to
our explications, and check them against another accessible text, by an acknow-
ledged astronomical expert, the Phaenomena of Aratus.'

An essential postulate of the Arateans' semiology is that the constellation
figures of Aratus coincide with, and carry the same literal identities as, the
traditional constellation figures of Graeco-Roman culture, both learned and
popular. The astral bears, Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, were the same pair of
bears for Aratus as for the astronomers and seafarers of classical antiquity — as
indeed they remain in today's celestial cartography, with some tidying of bound-
aries. Whatever else they were, they were agreed signs in one of the most
widespread and durable semiotic conventions of our world. Because they were
so widely current, the Arateans could depend on their accrued authority, as well
as on the authority of Aratus himself, to legitimate the figurative meanings which
they read into them.

It is precisely on the status of the stars as signs that Hippolytus attacks and
'refutes' the Arateans. As he cogently argues (Ref. 4.50), the stars themselves long
pre-existed the constellation figures which humanity descried in them. The
constellations, far from being the archetypes of things on earth (as the Arateans
contend), 27 are mere arbitrary groupings, constructed by humans so as to make
the stars more easily recognizable (eusema).

However, what seems to us an obvious and self-evidently correct rebuttal
would not appear so to many of the ancients. Hippolytus is no modern, making
a general semiological point about the arbitrariness of no n- natural signs. For him
there could be no question of the human construction of meaning entirely by
language convention. Meaning, ultimately, is external to humanity. Whence does
it come, and by what means? To reply with the Arateans that it comes from the
stars in constellation figures forming a salvific text is neither more nor less
reasonable than to assert, with Augustine (see Markus 1996: 1-35), that it
comes through a certain set of historical facts expressed in the narrative of the
Old Testament and construed as God's signs. It all depends, finally, on what one
privileges as sacred text.

To illustrate the Arateans' reading of the celestial text, I set out the meanings
which they ascribed to their celestial signs in two columns (see table). In the first
column are displayed the traditional constellation meanings, in the second the
esoteric meanings. In Augustine's semiology this would correspond to the dis-
tinction between the literal meanings of Old Testament events and facts, which
are the subject of exegesis, and their figurative meanings, the subject of typo-
logical interpretation.

It is the Arateans' parallel sacred text, the Phaenomena, that enlightens us about
the figurative meanings of the signs which at the literal level in the celestial text

27 Ref. 4.49: the terms quoted are eikones, paradeigmata, ideal.

Star- Talk

173

Traditional meaning (literal) Esoteric meaning (figurative)

Draco

Hercules

Lyra

Corona Borealis

Serpens

Ophiuchus

Ursa Major

Ursa Minor

Canis Major

Cepheus

Cassiopeia

Andromeda

Perseus

Cetus

Cygnus

the diabolic Serpent

Adam

the harmonious instrument of God's law

the crown that rewards those who follow God's law

a lesser serpent, offspring of Draco

God's Logos that restrains the serpents and comforts man

the creation (ktisis) of Adam; the road and wisdom of the Greeks

the creation of Christ; the road and wisdom of the elect

the Logos (alternative sign)

Adam (alternative sign)

Eve

the soul (sic sing.) of Adam and Eve

the Logos (alternative sign); the cosmic axle

a diabolic monster (as the serpents)

the divine spirit

signify the constellations. For example, why the Bears, Ursa Major and Ursa
Minor, should signify the routes to wisdom for the 'Greeks' and for the elect
respectively is entirely opaque until we read Aratus' comparison of the two
constellations at Phaenomena 37-44. Aratus speaks of the Bears as aids to
navigation. Ursa Major, which is used by Greek sailors, is the larger and more
obvious. Ursa Minor is used by the Phoenicians; it is smaller, and since it wheels
closer to the pole it is the more reliable and accurate guide. These contrasted
descriptions intimate to the heresiarch how he might develop and nuance his basic
contrast between the two orders of creation, 'that according to Adam' and 'that
according to Christ'. The constellations now come to represent not merely the
creations themselves, but their opposed systems of 'doctrine and wisdom' (Ref.
4.48), by which one navigates life's journey. The Greater Bear is the route and
wisdom of the Greeks, of Man's creation, not God's. Being the larger, it is the route
of the many. Its error is manifest in an alternative name, used by Aratus in this
navigational context: Helice, the Coil. Those who follow it 'go round in circles'. It
leads nowhere. The Lesser Bear is the route of the wiser Phoenicians. It is the route
of God's creation, not Man's. Being smaller, it is the road of the few, the 'narrow
road', with all the soteriological connotations of that term. It is more accurately
aligned, it leads 'straight' to its destination, and it is altogether preferable. For does
not Aratus say authoritatively that it is 'better for sailors' (line 42) and that 'by it
the Sidonians navigate most directly' (line AA)? It too has another name, figura-
tively relevant in context: Cynosura, the Dog's Tail. The Dog is the Logos,
shepherding the elect along the proper path and keeping at bay the beasts which
would destroy them. All is clear, if only we 'read' the heavens, Aratus in hand.

The celestial navigation of the Arateans recalls the celestial navigation of the
Indigo Bunting discussed in the preceding chapter. Buntings navigate, in the

174 Star-Talk

literal sense of planning and implementing a journey in the actual world, by
means of a cognitive template of the revolution of circumpolar stars. Arateans
plan and implement a metaphorical journey, a journey of salvation. They validate
their respective journeys by appeal to the same visible objects in the common
environment construed as signs, the wheeling stars of the night sky. A bunting
which has successfully educated itself extracts two simple yet vital messages from
the signs: 'go towards the centre of revolution' in the spring, 'go away from the
centre of revolution' in the fall. The proof of lessons well learnt is successful
migration. 28

As humans, the Arateans enjoyed all the resources of metaphor, communica-
tion, and external memory denied the buntings. Using the same objects as signs,
they constructed a soteriological journey by superimposing on the celestial text of
the constellations two hypertexts: 29 first, the exegetical text of Aratus, the Phae-
nomena, then the interpretive text of their prophet, Hippolytus' unnamed
heresiarch. 30 As in Augustinian biblical semiology two centuries later, at the
lower level the exegetical text explicates the signs, at the higher level the inter-
pretive text displays their salvific sense and meaning.

Before we leave the Arateans' reading of the constellations, we should note a
significant deficiency in the discourse — its monotony. As interpreted by the
Arateans, the constellations transmit a single message; they tell the same old
story over and over and over again, night after night as the heavens turn. Granted,
the message and the story are supremely important, nothing less than the
salvation of humanity. The problem, though, is not that the conversation of
the stars is boring. From the ancient, Platonic perspective the unvarying revolu-
tion of the sphere of the fixed stars is supremely interesting because it is the only
visible manifestation of the god who is the cosmos. 31 Rather, the problem is that
Aratean star-talk appears to lack what we have already identified as a necessary
feature of language. That feature is recursivity, the power of natural languages to
generate out of a limited number of signs an unlimited number of utterances.

Fortunately, one can immediately identify a set of signs, absent from the
celestial text of the Arateans, which enables star-talk to function recursively.

28 Buntings raised in a starless planetarium, the bunting equivalent of a surd universe, 'migrate',
i.e. start hopping, in any and every direction. Buntings raised in a planetarium with a shifted north
celestial pole, the equivalent of a deceptive and malevolent universe, 'migrate' towards the new pole,
thus demonstrating that 'revolution around a centre' is the operative sign, not particular star
patterns. It has to be this way, since the pole, i.e. 'true north', describes a wide circle through the
northern constellations in a period of <:.25,000 years, which is quite rapid on an evolutionary time
scale, and more often than not there is no 'pole star' at all. Over mere hundreds of bunting
generations, the circumpolar constellations by themselves cease to be reliable indicators.

29 Or, if you will, metatexts or paratexts.

30 Whether this was an actual book or a body of oral teaching is immaterial.

31 As Plato himself puts it in the Timaeus (34b, trans. Lee): 'So he [the creator] established a
single spherical universe in circular motion, alone but because of its excellence needing no company
other than itself, and satisfied to be its own acquaintance and friend. His creation, then, for all these
reasons, was a blessed god {eudaimona theon)'

Star-Talk 175

These signs are seven in number; they are of course the planets. It is the motions
of the planets at varying speeds, bringing them into ever-changing positions and
relationships both to each other and to the constellations/signs of the zodiac, that
enables the generation of new sentences in star-talk virtually without limit.
Rightly, Origen {Philocalia 23.20, p. 200 Junod) identifies the revolution of the
celestial bodies (tes ton ouranion periphoras) as the factor which makes them
language signs {hosperei grammata kai characteras . . . anagignoskein ta semeia tou
theou).

10. MAKE-BELIEVE STAR-TALK: ZENO OF VERONA'S
BAPTISMAL INTERPRETATION OF THE ZODIAC

At Easter, some year during the 360s, Bishop Zeno of Verona preached a sermon
(Tractatus 1.38, ed. Lofstedt) to the newly baptized in which he Christianized the
zodiac by endowing its twelve signs with new salvific meanings. 32 Zeno says that
he will indulge his flock's astrological 'curiosity' (otherwise now strictly forbid-
den) by revealing to them the 'sacred horoscope' of their baptism (1.2): sicut
parvulis morem geram sacrique horoscopi pandam tota brevitate secreta.

Edifying and rhetorically accomplished though Zeno's sermon may be, it is
not star-talk in the way that the discourse which the Arateans read in the heavens
most certainly was. The difference is partly a matter of sincerity: that while the
Arateans believed that the constellations really did transmit a message, which
they could decipher with the aid of the text of Aratus, Zeno's zodiacal message is
patently a contrivance, a conceit in which he makes no ontological or semio-
logical investment. The Arateans had wholeheartedly entered into the semiotic
convention of stars as signs, but Zeno plays with it allegorically to extract some
timely salvific lessons for his newly baptized audience.

What, though, warrants my confidence in Zeno's lack of commitment to his
allegorical props? There is an objective reason as well as one's subjective sense of
Zeno's rhetorical intent. As a simple matter of fact, Zeno's discourse does not
deliver what it purports to deliver — a horoscope. Horoscopes have their rules,
both of form and of content; which is to say that, constructed and read as
utterances in star-talk, they follow certain quite strict rules of grammar and of
semantics. Zeno's 'horoscope' conforms neither grammatically nor semantically
to the template. Consequently, read as star-talk, it is utter nonsense — which of
course does not mean that it is not both effective and comprehensible as a
Christological and soteriological allegory based on the astrological meanings
and associations of the twelve signs of the zodiac.

32 See Hiibner 1975; Hegedus 2000: 303-20.

176 Star-Talk

Superficially, Zeno's 'horoscope' does look like one, especially to a casual
modern reader used to seeing horoscopes which go through the twelve signs of
the zodiac daily in the newspapers. Traversing the signs, in the same standard
order from Aries round to Pisces, is exactly what Zeno does. He has this, for
example, to say about the fifth sign, Leo (2.4): 'Our Leo [i.e. the Christian
Leo = Christ], as Genesis bears witness [49: 9], 33 is the "lion cub", whose holy
sacraments we celebrate, who "reclined in sleep" for this purpose, that he might
overcome death, and for this purpose awoke, that he might confer on us the gift
of immortality, his own blessed resurrection.'

What is wrong with this? Nothing, if Zeno were playing the Aratean game. He
has discovered, via Genesis 49: 9, a typological meaning for Leo. But Zeno is not
playing that language game, at least overtly. He is making, or pretends to be
making, a horoscopic statement. As such it is defective to the point of incom-
prehensibility. A properly formed horoscopic statement must convey the follow-
ing information (at a minimum) in the following grammatical form:

(1) celestial event E signifies outcome O

or, expressed in terms of the fulfilment of a condition:

(2) if E, then O.

'O' is typically some terrestrial event, but it need not be. Other types of outcomes
are, for example, character traits in the subject of a natal horoscope or eventu-
alities that the subject should guard against. In Zeno's context, we would expect
some outcome in the spiritual lives of the newly baptized. 'O', we might say is
conferral of the gift of immortality through the resurrection of Christ, the Lion
Cub. So far, so good.

The problem lies in the protasis. In a well-formed, 'grammatical' horoscope
the celestial event 'E' must consist of at least one pair of terms in a contingent
relationship, for example, 'Sun in Leo'. Thus, minimally:

(3) E = A + B

where A' and 'B' are celestial entities (bodies or geometrical constructs, e.g. the
Sun and the 30° sector of the zodiac known as Leo), and '+' stands for the
contingent relationship (e.g. 'Sun in Leo').

From (2) and (3), it follows that a horoscopic statement must, at a minimum,
exhibit the form:

(4) if A + B, then 0.

Zeno's pretended horoscopic statements are defective, and thus unintelligible
as such, precisely because they lack the necessary pair of terms in a contingent
relationship.

33 In the Genesis context the lion cub is Judah.

Star-Talk 177

(5) *If A (= Leo), then O (= immortality)

is not a well-formed statement in horoscopal star-talk, either grammatically or
semantically. A reader competent in star-talk is left with the unanswered ques-
tion, 'Leo and what?'

But does not a newspaper horoscope exhibit the same form? Superficially, yes;
however, all such horoscopes in fact carry a silent but understood second element
in the protasis. What the horoscope actually says is:

(6) If you were born when the Sun was in Leo, the prognosis for your day is
thus and thus.

Clearly, the formal requirements of (4) are met.

Our digression into horoscopes has shown that a linguistic approach to the
significance of the heavens in antiquity, strange though it must initially seem, is
both more rigorous and more illuminating than a symbolic or allegorical ap-
proach alone. It is a characteristic of natural language that agreement can be
reached as to when and why an utterance is ill-formed or nonsensical. Zeno's
baptismal sermon with its make-believe 'horoscope' provides a good test case.
Star-talk is a language, or can profitably be treated as such, because one can locate
a penumbra of defective and nonsensical statements surrounding it.

11. 'ROLLING UP THE SCROLL': MAXIMUS CONFESSOR
AND THE END OF HISTORY

For our final Christian source we turn to late antiquity (seventh century) and to a
fragment of Maximus Confessor published in the Catalogus codicum astrologorum
Graecorum (vol. 7: 1 00— l). 34 To understand it, one must appreciate that it is an
exegesis of Isaiah 34: 4, 'all the host of heaven shall crumble into nothing, the
heavens shall be rolled up like a scroll, and the starry host fade away' (NEB
trans.):

The stars in heaven are what letters are in a book. Through both, men gain knowledge of
the things that are. Through letters they gain the recovery (hypomnesin) of words, through
the stars the diagnosis of seasons and signs in the graphic mode (ten ton kairon kai semeion
kata ten graphiken diagnosin). Just as after the book is finally read it is rolled up (hedissetai)
by its owner, so when the life of humanity is completed the stars of heaven will fall since
they serve no further purpose (hos achresta pesountai). Heaven will be 'rolled up'; it will
not be 'shortened like a sail' (sustellomenos) or 'made to disappear' (aphanizomenos). It will
be useless (achrestos), for there will be no one there to look at it in order to diagnose the
things that are (pros ten ton onton diagnosin) .

34 The passage is discussed by F. Messerschmidt (1931: 68—9) as a suitable conclusion to a survey
('Himmelsbuch und Sternschrift') which starts with Euripides (fr. 506 Nauck) a millennium earlier.

178 Star-Talk

For Maximus, reality (ta onta, 'the things that are') is accessible to us humans
in two texts: (1) ordinary earthly books in which letters lead us to the hypomnesis
('recall', in the sense of Plato's Phaedrus) of words, and so to the things which
words signify; and (2) the book of heaven in which the stars, 'in graphic mode',
lead us to the 'diagnosis' (discernment) of 'seasons and signs'. What happens to
these two interrelated texts at the end of human history and the Day of
Judgement, which are Maximus' ultimate concern in this fragment? The reality
of the present dispensation ('the things which are'), to which both texts are keyed,
is finished and done with, so the texts serve no further purpose. There is no need
any more to consult the celestial text, to puzzle over problems of time and season
(when will such-and-such happen?) or of signification (what does such-and-such
a configuration mean?); and besides, there is no one left in the here and now to
read the text.

Scripture furnishes (of course) the logical and straightforward answer. What
happens to a text in scroll form when its owner is finished with it? He rolls it up
and puts it away. Ergo, as Isaiah said, 'heaven will be rolled up'. Why would one
expect otherwise? — Though nowadays one might rather say, 'click on the icon of
the document <startext> and drag to trash'. 35

12. PAGAN VIEWS (ASTRONOMERS, ASTROLOGERS,
PHILOSOPHERS); STARS AS BOTH SPEAKERS AND SIGNS

In their approach to the visible heavens and their phenomena most people in
antiquity, Christians for the most part excepted, shared two fundamental as-
sumptions: (1) the location of meaning in the heavens and the stars, independent
of any terrestrial reader or speaker of star-talk; and (2) the divinity and rationality
of the celestial bodies themselves. These two assumptions have a peculiar conse-
quence semiotically: (3) the stars are both the signs and the speakers of star-talk.
Star-talk is the natural language of the denizens of heavens just as Greek and
Latin and Hebrew are (some of) the natural languages of humans. The difference
is that, unlike Greek and Latin and Hebrew, star-talk is a language in which the
signs, qua speakers, talk to and convey meaning to themselves, regardless of any
human audience. When humans overhear it and try to speak or write it, it is
necessarily second-order star-talk, a replication and elaboration of the primary
celestial discourse.

35 Readers disturbed by this Beckettesque End Game might like to know the sequel in Maximus'
scenario. Light will return, because 'the righteous will shine like stars'. It will be an intellectual light.
Consequently, the damned will be confined in double darkness, for physical light is no more and
they have lost irrevocably and eternally the intellectual light.

Star-Talk 179

13. THE DIVINITY AND RATIONALITY OF CELESTIAL
BODIES: PTOLEMY AND PLATO

We shall start with the second assumption above, that the stars, and in particular
the Sun, the Moon, and the other five planets, are divine and rational beings —
gods, in other words, or at the very least the gods' celestial surrogates and place-
markers. Of the two assumptions this second one is the more obvious and the
easier to document. It is evident both in the ancients' astronomical terminology
and in their religious practices. The names of the planets reveal it: in Greek, the
planet Jupiter carries the god's name in the form 'the [sc. star] of Zeus' — ho tou
Dios (aster), when it it is not called simply 'Zeus'. 36 In religion, moreover, any
solar cult necessarily presupposes the divinity of at least one of the visible celestial
bodies, the Sun. Even within Christianity, we find Origen lauding the stars as
beacons of 'true intellectual' (noeton kai alethinon) light as well as physical light
{Contra Celsum 5.10): 37

They are living (zoia), rational (logika), morally serious (spoudaia) beings, and they were
made to shine with the light of knowlege by Wisdom, which is 'an effulgence of eternal
light' [Wisdom of Solomon 7: 26]. Their visible light is the work of the creator of all
things, their intellectual light probably comes from their own free agency (autexousion) .

A Mithraist could not have said it more handsomely. Clearly, such beings would
have something interesting and edifying to say — for those with the wits to listen
to their talk.

Little point would be served by multiplying examples of how the ancients
treated the stars as both divine and rational. For our purposes, two leading but
very different authors will suffice: Plato in the Timaeus and Ptolemy in the
introduction to the Almagest. A huge time span and a huge advance in scientific
knowledge (in the fullest modern sense) separate the two. Nevertheless, Ptolemy's
Almagest, the acme of ancient mathematical astronomy, exhibits the same con-
viction about the divinity and intentionality of the heavenly bodies as does Plato's
Timaeus, which had established antiquity's most widely accepted cosmological
paradigm half-a-millennium earlier.

Ptolemy was also the author of an astrological handbook, the Tetrabiblos, the
introduction to which is equally germane. In it he argues (Tetr. 1.1) that the stars
in their configurations and courses are both signs and causes of things on earth.
Predictions based on these celestial signs are necessarily subject to error, since the
outcomes belong to the contingent, physical, sublunary world. Exempt from that

36 On planetary nomenclature see Cumont 1935; Gundel and Gundel 1950: 2025-33. Histor-
ically, the change is from the fuller to the abbreviated form, reflecting (according to Cumont 1935:
35) not just a 'linguistic change' but also a 'modification in the religious conception of the planets 1 ,
i.e. a closer identification of the god with the visible celestial body.

37 See Hegedus 2000: 283-5; Scott 1991: 113-49.

180 Star-Talk

uncertainty are predictions about the motions of the celestial bodies themselves
and the configurations in relation to each other and the earth which those
motions produce. These motions and configurations are the subject matter of
the primary branch of astronomy (or as we would call it, of astronomy as
opposed to astrology). 38 This discipline, in that it is engaged solely with the
translunary universe, is self-sufficient (autoteles) and secure {bebaios). By 'self-
sufficient' Ptolemy means that astronomy proper is a closed system; it depends on
nothing and makes reference to nothing beyond the writ of the immutable laws
to which the heavens conform. Indeed, astronomy is but the exploration of the
necessary outcomes of those laws.

The postulate on which the 'self-sufficiency' and 'security' of those celestial
laws depend is the principle of uniform circular motion. 39 Since nothing in our
terrestrial world appears to move naturally and under its own impetus in a perfect
circle, and to move in that figure perpetually and at a uniform speed, it must be
supposed that the celestial bodies which do exhibit motion of that kind are
themselves of an entirely different nature and substance. Hence the 'aether' or
'fifth essence' of standard Aristotelian physics. Hence too, historically, antiquity's
great divorce of heaven from earth.

The sole scientific bridge across that chasm was astronomy. This is the point
which Ptolemy makes in the introduction to the Almagest (1.1). Astronomy is a
mathematical discipline intermediate between physics and — theology. Its objects
of study, like those of physics, are material and observable; but unlike those of
physics they are not liable to change and decay. On the other tack, astronomy's
objects are divine beings, like those of theology; but, unique among the orders of
divine beings, they are regularly observable. Since astronomy studies the orderly
behaviour of divine beings, it is not only an intellectual pursuit but also a moral
and aesthetic pursuit, arguably the best there is:

With regard to virtuous conduct in practical actions and character, this science, above all
things, could make men see clearly; from the constancy, order, symmetry and calm which
are associated with the divine, it makes its followers lovers of this divine beauty,
accustoming them and reforming their natures, as it were, to a similar spiritual state.
(Aim. 1.1, trans. Toomer)

Some five centuries before Ptolemy, Plato related, through the persona of the
cosmologist Timaeus (after whom the dialogue is named), a narrative of creation.

38 Interestingly, Ptolemy's differentiation between astronomy and astrology is less extreme than
Augustine's. For Ptolemy it is simply a matter of distinguishing between the sure and certain
predictions of astronomy and the less certain, but still frequently correct, predictions of astrology.
For Augustine, as we have seen (above, sect. 7), the chasm is vast and unbridgeable: on the one hand,
a legitimate science of the motions and positions of the celestial bodies as natural objects; on the
other hand, an error-fraught conversation with demons in which the celestial bodies serve as signs in
a conventional language. Stripped of its religious garb, Augustine's distinction is actually closer to
that drawn by modern science.

3 9 See e.g. Aim. 1.3.

Star-Talk 181

Plato's primary concern was not to give a Genesis-like catalogue of the contents
of creation, though he does, like the author(s) of Genesis, pay close attention to
its temporal (or meta-temporal) sequence. Rather, his concern was to explain
how everything in creation, including the material universe itself, was created to
plan so as to instantiate orderliness, goodness, and rationality, each thing at its
appropriate level. With good reason, then, he considers the universe first, what it
is, in and of itself, not as the mere sum of its parts. Here is how he characterizes
it — and we should bear in mind that the visible proof, the empirical base for his
characterization, is the rotation of the prime celestial sphere carrying with it as it
turns all celestial bodies:

And so the most likely account must say that this world (kosmon) came to be in very truth,
through god's providence, a living being with soul and intelligence (zoon empsychon
ennoun te). (Timaeus 30b6-9, trans. Lee)

For of the seven physical motions he [the creator] allotted to it [the kosmos] the one
which most properly belongs to intelligence and reason (noun kai phronesin), and made it
move with a uniform and circular motion on the same spot. (ibid. 34a 1—4)

This was the plan of the eternal god when he gave to the god about to come into existence
a smooth and unbroken surface, equidistant in every direction from the centre, and made
it a physical body whole and complete . . . And he put soul (psychen) in the centre and
diffused it through the whole and enclosed the body in it. So he established a single
spherical universe in circular motion, alone but because of its excellence needing no
company other than itself, and satisfied to be its own acquaintance and friend.
His creation, then, for all these reasons, was a blessed god (eudaimona theori) (ibid.
34a8-b9).

In these passages Plato sets for most of classical antiquity, its scientists
included, the benchmark for divinity and rationality. Uniform circular motion
is the primary 'outward and visible sign' of those qualities. It is not just a symbol
of divinity and rationality, in the sense that Plato might have used it metaphor-
ically as a stand-in for qualities that cannot be apprehended visually. Rather, it
is the instantiation of divinity and rationality in the visible world, in the sense
that it is divinity and rationality, or as much of it as we can perceive directly
with our eyes. Semiologically, it is both an index and an icon: an index because
it indicates divinity and rationality by virtue of an actual relationship (as smoke
to fire) rather than a conventional relationship (the word 'fire' to actual fire); an
icon — and this is the difficult part for us moderns — because that is what
divinity and rationality actually look like (as in signage a drawing of an elevator
looks like an elevator and a drawing of an escalator like an escalator). Finally,
for our present inquiry, we must not forget that it is also a language sign, or
rather an utterance which bespeaks divinity and rationality, gods to gods, gods
to men, and men to men. As the last of our three quotations above illustrates, it
is what the self-sufficient universe communicates to itself as 'its own acquaint-
ance and friend'.

182 Star-Talk

Moving on from the universe in and of itself, Plato treats of the stars and
planets which exhibit circular motion as indices of their own and the universe's
rationality and divinity. Were there no celestial bodies visible in motion, we could
have no conception — at least none mediated through the sense of sight — of
divinity and rationality. And that, as Plato later explains (46e7— 47b2) when
dealing with our physical senses, is precisely why we have eyes in our heads — the
spherical human head, by no means coincidentally, being yet another likeness of
the cosmos. 40

We must go on to describe the chief benefit of the function of sight, which was the god's
reason for giving it to us. For I reckon that the supreme benefit for which sight is
responsible is that not a word of all we have said about the universe could have been
said if we had not seen stars and sun and heaven. As it is, the sight of day and night, the
months and returning years, the equinoxes and solstices, has caused the invention of
number, given us the notion of time, and made us inquire into the nature of the universe;
thence we have derived philosophy, the greatest gift the gods have ever given or will give to
mortals. That is what I call the greatest good our eyes give us.

Here is how Plato describes the ever-visible gods who are the fixed stars
(40a2-b6):

The divine form he [the creator] made mostly of fire so that it should be as bright and
beautiful to look at as possible; and he made it spherical like the universe and set it to
follow the movement of the highest intelligence (tithesi te eis ten tou kratistou phronesin
ekeinoi synhepomenon), distributing it round the circle of the heaven to be a kind of
universal cosmic embroidery. And he gave each divine being two motions, one uniform in
the same place, as each always thinks the same thoughts about the same things (peri ton
auton aei ta auta heautoi dianooumenoi), the other forward, as each is subject to the
movement of the Same and uniform; but he kept them unaffected by the other five kinds
of motion, that each might be as perfect as possible. This is the origin of the fixed stars,
which are living beings, divine and eternal and remain always rotating in the same place
and the same sense.

The fixed stars are divine and intelligent because they are perfect spheres which
both rotate about their own centres and revolve around the common universal
centre, unendingly and at an unvarying speed; 41 and they perform those rota-
tions and revolutions because they are intelligent and divine. Uniform circular
motion is thus the necessary and sufficient condition of divinity and rationality
for the fixed stars.

40 'They [the gods acting on the creator's instructions] copied the shape of the universe and
fastened the two divine orbits of the soul into a spherical body, which we now call the head, the
divinest part of us which controls all the rest' (44d3— 6) . The 'two divine orbits 1 (periodous) are the
rotation of the sphere of the fixed stars westward and the revolution of the planets eastward.

41 There was no observational evidence, accessible to the ancients, for the axial rotation of the
fixed stars. Plato postulates it a priori because the stars must instantiate in themselves as well as in
their orbits the prime and only visible property of the divine and rational universe.

Star-Talk 183

Although Plato does not here repeat the specifics of their motions, which he
had discussed earlier (38-9), the planets too are spheres manifesting circular
motion. 42 Accordingly they too are intelligent and divine. 43

14. THE PLATONIST VIEW OF HOW THE STARS

COMMUNICATE AND HOW WE UNDERSTAND THEM;

IMPLICATIONS OF THE COSMOLOGY OF THE TIMAEUS

For the most part, we can say, the ancients conceived of the celestial bodies as
rational and divine beings, who could accordingly communicate both with each
other and with us rational humans. This claim about the ancients' conception of
the visible heavens is scarcely controversial.

Our next question, then, must be: what, from the ancient pagan perspective —
specifically the Platonist perspective — is the nature of that celestial communica-
tion and how is it effected? Is it, or can it usefully be treated as, language
communication? Did the pagans construe it as such, whether explicitly, as did
certain Christian thinkers in antiquity, or implicitly? If so, can we reconstruct
something of its semiotics?

Let us start with how communication is effected across rational species, from
the celestial gods to humans. The Timaeus has a straightforward but, from a
modern perspective, exceedingly strange answer. We have already taken note of
the role of the human eye in the reception of the visible gods into our souls (see
preceding section). But how do we know and appreciate the true import of these
images, what they really signify, or even that they are message-bearing signs at all?

The answer lies in the construction and composition of the human soul. We
understand the true significance of the celestial bodies and their motions because
our souls were made of the same stuff and behave in the same way ( Timaeus
43a4-6, trans. Lee): And into this body, subject to the flow of growth and
decay, 44 they [the divine agents of the creator] fastened the orbits of the immortal
soul {tas tes athanatou psyches periodous).' We know that what we see in the
heavens are the periodoi (journeys around, circuits, orbits) of divine and rational
beings because, and only because, the qualitatively identical soul-stuff is perform-
ing its circuits inside our physical heads. Furthermore, this soul-stuff spinning

42 But not, at least in appearances, uniform circular motion. Hence the great project of Greek
astronomy: to 'save' appearances by accounting for them as epiphenomena of a combination of
motions which were not only circular but also uniform.

43 Fortunately, the vexed question of whether axial rotation is to be inferred for the planets as well
as for the fixed stars need not here concern us. Whatever answer is returned to that question, my
argument concerning uniform circular motion and the rationality and divinity of the celestial bodies
is unaffected. For discussions of this passage (40) and its implications, see Taylor 1928: 221—45;
Cornford 1937: 1 17-37; Dicks 1970: 131—7. For a full discussion of the astronomical aspects of the
cosmogony and cosmology of the Timaeus, see Dicks 1970: 1 16—37; Gregory 2000.

44 Literally, 'subject to influx and efflux'.

184 Star-Talk

within our heads empowers us not only to recognize divinity and rationality
when we see them in the heavens but also internally to function as rational beings
and to live truly reasonable lives. This is the model of rationality which informs
the entire narrative of the creation of humanity (4la2-47e2), the reasoning
human mind as an embodied instantiation of cosmic periodoi, dwelling originally
in the stars and destined thither to return.

In due course I shall discuss certain particulars of this Platonic model of
rationality First, however, we must stress that Plato does not offer just a disguised
analogy: that our reason functions somewhat like the rotation/revolutions of the
stars. No, our rational minds function thus because they consist a/the same
rotating/ revolving soul-stuff whose operations we can actually see in the revolv-
ing stars and hence infer for the rotating universe. In other words, Plato gives us
an ontological as well as a functional explanation of rational mind.

The psychology and anthropology of the Timaeus is thoroughly conditioned
by this communicative relationship between the rotating/revolving celestial
bodies and the mind. As a species of land-going animal we are distinguished
by our spherical heads set at the summit of our bipedal bodies. Our heads are
spherical so as to accommodate the spinning 'periods' of our rational souls; they
are atop our bodies so as to elevate us, literally, toward heaven, our souls' true
origin and destination (90a2-9):

We should think of the most authoritative part of our soul as a guardian spirit given by
god, living at the summit of the body, which can properly be said to lift us from the earth
towards our home in heaven; for we are creatures not of earth but of heaven, where the
soul was first born, and our divine part attaches us by the head to heaven, like a plant by its
roots, and keeps our body upright.

In contrast, other land-going species are lowered groundwards as quadrupeds
or worse, the number of their feet being directly proportional to their affinity
with earth and to the depth of their stupidity; 45 and their heads are flattened and
distorted because 'their orbits {periphorai) have been compressed by disuse'
(91e6— 92a7). These outcomes and life- forms are not ours or the animals' by
necessity of membership in particular species. Rather they are the ontogenetic
consequences of each individual soul's use or abuse of its rational 'orbits'.

Perhaps the zoology of the Timaeus is more playful than serious — in which
case modern science has played a curious posthumous trick on Plato. As we saw
in the last chapter (sect. 1 5), there is as a matter of verified fact one species of bird,
the Indigo Bunting, which has mentally internalized the revolution of the
stars around the pole as a template for migratory navigation. Whether
Plato would have enjoyed the joke one cannot say — a Socrates or an Aristophanes
would have loved it, as also the match between actual bunting cognition and

45 Worst is no feet at all: 'the stupidest of the land animals, whose whole bodies lay stretched on
the earth, the gods turned into reptiles, giving them no feet, because they had no further need of
them' (trans. Lee).

Star-Talk 185

Plato's own characterization of birds as reincarnations of harmless but silly souls
who have spent too much time in observational instead of theoretical astronomy
(91d6-el)!

Whatever the case with the animals, we should not doubt that Plato's descrip-
tion of the replication of the celestial 'periods' in the periods' of the rational
human soul is both deeply serious and intended literally. The function of that
replication of the macrocosm in the microcosm is a pedagogy of the soul which
begins with sight and ends in understanding, and its goal is the restoration of the
orderly motions of the universe in the disordered motions of the soul:

The god invented and gave us vision in order that we might observe the circuits of
intelligence in the heaven and profit by them for the revolutions of our own thought,
which are akin to them, though ours be troubled and they are unperturbed; and that, by
learning to know them and acquiring the power to compute them rightly according to
nature, we might reproduce (mimoumenoi) the perfectly unerring revolutions of the god
and reduce to settled order the wandering motions in ourselves. (Timaeus 47b5-c5, trans.
Cornford)

Now there is but one way of caring for anything, namely to give it the nourish-
ment and motions proper to it. The motions akin to the divine part in us are the
thoughts and revolutions of the universe:

these, therefore, every man should follow, and correcting those circuits in the head that
were deranged at birth, by learning to know the harmonies and revolutions of the world,
he should bring the intelligent part, according to its pristine nature, into the likeness of
that which intelligence discerns (toi katanooumenoi to katanooun exhomoiosai), 46 and
thereby win the fulfillment of the best life set by the gods before mankind both for the
present time and for the time to come. (90c6— d7, trans. Cornford)

In the narrative of the soul's descent into the mortal bodies of humans and its
return to the heavens, the Timaeus (together with the Phaedrus) furnishes a
companion text to Mithraic soteriology and, more important, to the function
of the mithraeum, discussed in the preceding chapter (sect. 11), as venue and
platform for 'induction into a mystery of the descent and departure of souls'
(Porphyry, De antro 6). Notice how, in the first of the passages quoted above,
intellectual and moral education is a process in which we are said to 'mime'
{mimoumenoi) the 'perfectly unerring revolutions of the god' so as to 'reduce to
settled order the wandering motions in ourselves'. The Greek distinguishes
literally between the 'unwandering' (aplaneis) and the 'wandering' (peplanemenas)
orbits, which of course are respectively the orbits of the 'fixed' stars and the orbits
of the planets. Replicating and relating these orbits, as I argued, is both the
structural function of the mithraeum and the ritual task of its initiates. It is also
the reason why, theologically, 'they assigned to Mithras the equinoxes as his
proper seat' {De antro 24), for the equinoxes are, spatially, the points at which the

46 More literally, 'to assimilate the thinking agent to the object thought'.

186 Star-Talk

orbit of the 'unwandering' (i.e. the celestial equator) is tied to the orbit of the
wandering' (i.e. the ecliptic).

15. THE CELESTIAL LOCATION OF MEANING

The Timaeus, we may agree, furnishes a celestially oriented epistemology and
model of cognition. That it also furnishes a celestial semiotics is less obvious.
That it does so, or rather that it carries certain semiological presuppositions
about the celestial bodies as signs, will be the burden of the present section. From
the Timaeus I shall generalize to ancient preconceptions about the visible heavens
as a source of meaning and sign-giving. Of the more explicit views of the early
Christians on the stars as signs I have already given an account at the beginning of
this chapter.

A general condition for something to function as a sign is that it signify
something other than itself. The Timaeus actually breaks this rule: its universe,
as we have seen, communes with itself about itself, and is happy and fulfilled in
doing so. It is a uniformly rotating sphere which talks to a uniformly rotating
sphere, which is necessarily none other than itself, about being a uniformly
rotating sphere.

When we move down the ontological orders of being to the visible gods in the
thereby visible heavens, that is to the phenomena' of astronomy, we encounter
beings who not only make manifest the universe's interior monologue of uniform
spherical rotation but also realize it in their own daily revolutions. Moreover,
they instantiate, and are brought into being so as to instantiate, various great
principles, necessarily other than and independent of themselves: divinity, ra-
tionality, the binary opposition of the Same and the Different, Time. 47

Here, then, we have a beginning of a semiotics and a semantics set in the
visible heavens. The celestial bodies signify something other than themselves; they
mean something other than themselves.

So far, so good. But how do celestial bodies 'signify' and 'mean'? What
transforms a set of entities into language signs which can express and commu-
nicate meaningful utterances? In the case of the stars and planets it is their
motions, their 'journeyings-around' (periphorai, periodoi), which furnish the
syntax by which the stars and planets both 'signify' and 'mean' as noun signs in
the utterances of a language. Or we might say, more simply, that the language in
which the stars and planets serve as signs is their periphorai/periodoi. Centuries
later, but of course still within the Platonic tradition, Plotinus was to liken
celestial motion explicitly to utterance or, rather, writing in a language whose
characters (grammata) are the celestial bodies (Ennead 2.3 -7): 'Let us suppose that
[the stars] are like characters constantly being written in the heavens or as

47 We should add, from the earlier chapters of the Timaeus (35—6), proportion and existence.

Star-Talk 187

characters set in motion once they have been written {esto toinun hosper grammata
en ouranoi graphomena aei e gegrammena kai kinoumena),'

The stars instantiate language in the heavens not simply by being 'written'
there as characters once and for all, but either by being constantly {aei) written
there or by being set in motion {kinoumena) when written. To semi-modernize the
simile, we might think in the first instance of moveable type reset to compose new
messages and in the second the many individual still frames of a 'motion picture'
or 'movie'. What makes the celestial movie or, to return to 'star-talk, the ongoing
discourse of the signs of heaven possible is the change imported into the heavens
by the various motions of the planets, or in Platonist terms by the orbit(s) of the
Different. 48

In the context of the Timaeus, it follows that signification on serious matters
such as the nature of Divinity, Reason, Time, and the binary opposition of the
Same and the Different takes place in the visible heavens. That is where utter-
ances are made and where meaning originates. We humans read these speech acts
with eyes given to us for that purpose and we understand them by virtue of the
affinity of the microcosmic orbits of our souls to the macrocosmic orbits of
the heavens.

The serious Platonist is not so arrogant as to suppose that star-talk is directed
primarily, still less solely, at us humans. That is the vain and vulgar anthropo-
centric error of the hack astrologer, brilliantly exposed by Plotinus in Ennead
2.3.1-6. No, like all species, the divine stars live for themselves and for the All or
Whole, not merely to signify, still less to cause, the destinies of humans (2.3.3,
trans. Armstrong): 'For each [planetary god] has its own life to itself, and each
one's good is in its own act, and has nothing to do with us. The action on us of
living beings that have no part with us is always something incidental, not their
dominant activity. If, as with birds, their acting as signs is incidental, their work is
not directed at us at all.' 49

48 As we have seen in the case of Hippolytus' Aratean 'heretics' (above, sect. 9), the primary
message of the 'fixed' stars alone is necessarily limited, precisely because those stars never change in
relation to each other. They are like a single still photograph. They may of course say many different
things figuratively, but at the literal level, the fixed stars cannot say tomorrow anything other than
what they are saying today and what they said yesterday

49 Interestingly, in Enn. 4.4.6—8 Plotinus is at pains to show that the motions of the planets do
not and cannot mean the same to us as they do to the planets themselves. To us human observers
planetary motion registers as a change of position, for example from one sign of the zodiac to
another. But to the planets themselves there can be no change, for change would imply some former
state or condition, which would mean a memory of, and hence a separation from, that glorious Now
which the planetary gods, unlike us, have never lost. If we relate this argument to 2.3.7. on planetary
grammata, we would have to say that planet writing is read by us more grossly embodied human
souls as movement from one position to another (e.g. from Cancer to Leo), but it is actually not
composed and written in that idiom by the planet, because the planetary gods do not experience and
reflect on their motions in terms of change of position and so cannot knowingly communicate them
as such.

188 Star-Talk

Plotinus was not entirely opposed to astrology in the sense of denying all
celestial signification down into our sublunary and contingent world. He
objected of course to anything that imputed morally negative traits to the
planetary gods, still more to the implication that they could change from
benevolence to malevolence and vice versa depending on their 'aspects' to each
other and their positions in the heavens relative to the human subject of a
horoscope (2.3.1-6). Nevertheless, he allowed that cosmic sympathy, the inter-
connectedness of all parts of the universe, might warrant drawing conclusions
from celestial signs — if one had the wits to figure out the links from signifier to
signified (2.3.7). But in general he preferred to leave the stars to their own proper
business and to the business of the Whole. In another use of the simile of writing,
he emphasizes the metaphysically upward and universal intent of the discourse of
the stars, while acknowledging their other 'service' in communicating downward
and predictively to the human 'reader' (3.1.6, trans. Armstrong):

We must rather say that the movement of the stars is for the preservation of the universe
(hos pheretai men tauta epi soteridi ton holon) , but that they perform in addition another
service; this is that those who know how to read this sort of writing can, by looking at
them as if they were letters, read the future from their patterns, discovering what is
signified by the systematic use of analogy — for instance, if one said that when a bird flies
high it signifies some high heroic deeds.

As we have already seen (above, sect. 6), Origen reaches very similar conclu-
sions about the discourse of the heavens: star-talk is not intended for us mortals,
at least not in the time of our mortality The similarity is of course genealogical,
for both Origen and Plotinus were working within the same Platonic tradition.
Nevertheless, in the Timaeus, and thus in any subsequent Platonist or Platonizing
cosomology, the visible heavens are also the fons et origo of meaning for rational
humanity. The stars, in this mode of signification, are both speakers and signs. If
we are wise, we will listen to and assimilate what they tell us, attuning the circuits
of our souls to their grand originals, the orbits of the celestial bodies.

16. CONCLUSION

In this chapter we have gone a certain distance into our exploration of star-talk as
the language of the heavens and of humans replicating this celestial language in
various discourses of their own. We have seen that the ancients themselves
sometimes treated the celestial motions explicitly as a language and the ever-
changing but predictable schemata which those motions produce as utterances or,
more usually, writings (grammata) in a text. We have seen something of the
strange (to us) array of language communities — human, divine, demonic —
which speak and listen to these celestial utterances or write and read them as
text. We have noted that, unlike the natural languages, the signs of star-talk can

Star-Talk 189

themselves function as autonomous speakers (and audience) of the language.
Most importantly, we have seen that star-talk can be heard as a language of
figurative discourse. Those who hear it in this mode necessarily presuppose that
the stars, or the powers speaking through the stars, not only declare their past,
present, and future schemata, but also intend further meanings thereby, whether
that further meaning is a terrestrial 'outcome' {apotelesma) as in astrology or a
theological truth as in the constellation interpretations of the Arateans.

In the next chapter I shall apply our insights into 'star-talk' to the principal
icon of the Mithraic mysteries, the tauroctony. Since we have crossed what I
called 'Sperber's bar' and have satisfied ourselves that astral symbols, if only in the
context of the Mithraic mysteries, can and do function as language signs, we may
now with some confidence set about reading the tauroctony, parsing its sentences,
and explicating its meanings.

The Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System:
III. The Tauroctony

1. INTRODUCTION: THE EXEGESIS AND
INTERPRETATION OF STAR-TALK DISCOURSE

If you are expecting a new interpretation of the tauroctony in this chapter you
will, I fear, be disappointed. In fact the interpretation will be essentially the same
as that which I put forward more than a decade ago in my essay 'In the place of
the Lion: Mithras in the tauroctony' (1994). What is different is the way I now
reach my interpretation. I no longer approach the explananda as encoded
doctrine but instead as symbols apprehended on a structured site and as signs
deployed in star-talk discourse.

This revised approach necessarily involves two stages: first, so that we can read
the tauroctony at the literal level, an exegesis of what the astral signs actually say;
second, the interpretation proper, an exploration of what star-talk in the taur-
octony is, or may be, talking about non-literally, in other words its cosmological,
theological, soteriological, eschatological intent. For example, at the literal level
we shall see that the astral signs speak of a visible celestial hemisphere with Taurus
setting in the west, Leo culminating to the south, and Scorpius rising in the east.
Why they speak of this hemisphere rather than of one defined by, say, the tropic
signs (Aries setting, Cancer culminating, and Libra rising) is another matter. To
pose the why' is to ask an interpretive question, in effect to ask what this star-talk
utterance might mean over and above the literal statement 'Taurus is setting, Leo
is culminating, Scorpius is rising'.

This two-stage procedure is appropriate to our subject matter. As a method it
is grounded in antiquity's differentiation between literal meaning and figurative
meaning. Attention had to be paid to both, each at its proper level. For Porphyry,
to use a familiar example, it was by no means a trivial question whether or not the
cave described by Homer at Odyssey 13.102-12 was an actual feature of Ithacan
topography or a mere figment of Homer's invention for allegorical purposes (De
antro 2-4). The factuality, or otherwise, of literal meanings mattered.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 191

This two-stage method culminated in Augustine's exegesis and intetpretation
of the Old Testament in De doctrina Christiana and elsewhete (Markus 1996:
1-35; Rist 1994: 23-40). Following Markus, we may summarize Augustine's
semiology as follows:

God makes things and causes events. These things/events are facts. But they are
also God's words, and thus signs. He inspires authors to arrange these things/
events/signs so as to constitute a text/narrative. This text is the (Christian)
Old Testament. The text/narrative is true, literally. It is also meaningful, figura-
tively/typologically. The human exegete explicates the text at the literal level.
He requires knowledge of language (Hebrew, Greek, Latin), and knowledge
of things, both natural and human (i.e. of human institutions). The interpreter
(who may of course be one and the same as the exegete) searches anagogically
for the figurative meaning. On the principle of polysemy there may be several
valid figurative meanings. There are two privileged meanings, that intended
by the divine author (God) and that intended by the human (e.g. Moses).
These two meanings should of course coincide. The intent of the interpreter is
paramount. Only an intent founded on charity and thus aligned with the intent
of the divine and human authors will successfully discern figurative meaning.
Charity is a necessary condition of successful hermeneutics; it is not a sufficient
condition.

Augustine constructs a semiology which privileges past events and their narrative
as the deeds and words of God, thus sanctifying the record of history:

But, coming to the next point, we are not to reckon among human institutions those
things which men have handed down to us, not as arrangements of their own, but as the
result of investigation into the occurrences of the past, and into the arrangements of God's
providence. {De doctrina Christiana 2.27 AX)

And even when in the course of an historical narrative former institutions of men are
described, the history itself is not to be reckoned among human institutions; because
things that are past and gone and cannot be undone are to be reckoned as belonging to the
course of time, of which God is the author and governor, (ibid. 2.28.44)

The historical facts which concern Augustine most closely are those which
form the chain of events recorded, under divine guidance, in the books of the
Hebrew scriptures, the Christian Old Testament. These facts are the privileged
signs which, following their literal exegesis, the Christian scholar interprets
figuratively.

Nevertheless, the scriptures are not just allegories. Their facts are facts, not
quasi-facts, mere fictions designed with anagogic intent as props for the figurative
interpretation. The literal inerrancy of scripture is a fundamental given, as is its

1 92 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

factuality. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life are just
as real and as solid as the wood of Christ's Cross. 1

To what in the star-talk 'text' of the tauroctony do the persons, things, and
events in the Old Testament — the signs, that is, of Augustinian exegesis —
correspond? Obviously, to the celestial bodies and their relationships signified
by the astral signs deployed in the tauroctony's composition.

Notice that we have bypassed a first level of reference. In the scene of the
tauroctony the sculpted or painted raven, for example, refers to the raven which
was present when Mithras slew the bull. True — but irrelevant to our inquiry. We
are concerned with the raven as a star-talk sign for Corvus, not as the bird who
witnessed or participated in the event of the bull-killing.

In treating the image of the raven as a star-talk sign we do not of course deny
its function as a sign in the representation of the bull-killing event. That is a
given, indeed a tautology within the conventions of narrative art: the referent of
the image of the raven in the tauroctony is the raven which participated in the
bull-killing event in the myth of Mithras. Exegesis of what one might call the
narrative signs in the tauroctony and other scenes is merely the retelling of
the story of Mithras as it was presented to his initiates on the monuments of
his Mysteries. This story has been retold in every comprehensive study of the cult
since Franz Cumont's in 1899. To retell it here would merely return us to the
start of the fruitless interpretive project of narrative and doctrinal explication
from which we extracted ourselves in the first four chapters. Consequently, since
the images as narrative signs do not concern us here, I shall make very little
reference to the other events in the myth cycle represented in the side-scenes or in
self-contained compositions such as the banquet or the rock-birth.

Exegesis of star- talk signs is seldom if ever a matter of explicating a single sign:
after all, there is not much one can say about a one-word utterance. Rather,
exegesis is a matter of explicating star-talk signs in relation to each other. In fact,
it is only in relation to each other that the images acquire their star-talk meanings
in the first place. By itself the image of the raven says nothing beyond 'look, raven
present!' Only by association with the images of the other animals does it declare
itself the star-talk sign of the constellation Corvus. In particular, in association
with the images of the snake and the cup (the latter in Rhine- area tauroctonies) it
tells the catasterismic legend of Corvus (Gordon 1980£: 27). It is the task of
exegesis to rehearse that legend. The exegete will further explicate the moral of
the tale: it is an aetiological story which answers the question, why do ravens go
thirsty for a long period over the summer? Note that the elaboration and esoteric

1 The distinction between things as things and things as signs and the importance of not
forgetting the former are spelt out more fully and explicitly in Augustine's Commentary on Genesis,
from which our example of the two trees is taken (8.4.8): diligentius considerandum est, ne cogat in
allegoriam, ut non ista ligna fuerint, sed aliud aliquid nomine ligni significent. See Markus 1 996: 3—8.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 193

application of the moral is not the exegete's business; responsible exegetes confine
themselves to consensual meanings, explanations which 'everyone knows' are
correct. From our perspective these are the factoids of the 'encyclopaedia',
antiquity's store of common knowledge, which we have already looked at in
the context of the grade hierarchy (Ch. 5, sect. 5).

Exegesis completed, the interpreter takes over. It is the interpreter's task to
suggest why the public catasterismic story of the thirsty raven belongs in the
esoteric Mithraic story of the bull-killing and thus in the Mithraic mysteries. In
point of fact, the functions of both exegete and interpreter of the Corvus story
were fully discharged by Richard Gordon in 'Reality, evocation, and boundary'
(1980^: 25—32). Here we are concerned with firming up the methodological
route to conclusions already reached.

We may summarize the tasks of exegete and interpreter as follows. The exegete
helps you hear what the star-talk signs are saying at the literal level, in our present
example an aetiological story about thirsty ravens. The interpreter helps you hear
what the star-talk signs mean or intend by their literal utterances at the anagogic
level, which in the present instance is something about the significance of thirst
and aridity over a certain period of the summer.

Retrospectively, one can detect a certain irony in twentieth-century interpret-
ations of the tauroctony, in that mainline Mithraic scholarship has tended to
dismiss as 'speculation' what are actually the most secure readings of the icon and
to trust instead in the more speculative. This story I have already told as 'the
problem of referents' in Chapter 3, and there is no need to repeat it here. Suffice
it to say that scepticism about the astral interpretations was warranted by the
failure of their proponents to differentiate between the two stages of explanation:
exegesis and interpretation as we have termed them, following Augustine's
model. The astral interpreters (myself included) were both too modest in their
exegesis and too sanguine in their interpretations. That the images of the animals
in the tauroctony function as astral (star-talk) signs to define a particular area of
the heavens is a fact, not a conjecture. It has been demonstrated over and over
again by us astral interpreters (qua exegetes), and I do not intend to demonstrate
it yet again. 2 In contrast, the esoteric inferences one draws from the tauroctony
qua star-chart or, as I would prefer to put it here, the esoteric star-talk utterances
one hears or reads in the tauroctony, are necessarily tentative, difficult to
substantiate, more or less plausible guesswork. Augustine, who was naturally
concerned only with the Christian interpreter, listed the cardinal virtue of
Charity as the interpreter's necessary qualification. For the secular academic
interpreter of Mithraism's mysteries one would have to substitute knowledge of
the culture from which the religion was generated, a sense of what is plausible

2 For a formal, 'statistical demonstration of the extreme improbability of unintended coincidence
in the selection of elements in the composition' of the tauroctony, see my essay on that topic in Beck
2004c 251-65 = ch. 12.

194

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

and what is implausible in context, a recognition of the provisional nature of all
interpretation (soft facts at the best), and above all a comprehension of the
language of star-talk.

2. THE EXEGESIS OF STAR-TALK IN THE TAUROCTONY:
A. THE CONSTELLATION SIGNS

Since for the past quarter of a century I have devoted much of my research to the
astral explication of the Mithraic tauroctony and its symbolic structure, I shall
here set out the exegesis in summary form only. For more detailed explanations
see Beck 1976c; 1977 (= 2004c: ch. 8); 1984: 2081-3; 1988: 19-28, 91-100;
1994b (= 2004c: ch. 13); 2001: 62-71; 2004c: chs. 11 (The rise and fall of the
astral identifications of the tauroctonous Mithras') and 12 (Astral symbolism in
the tauroctony').

Al. The tauroctony represents a view or map of the heavens extending from
Taurus in the west to Scorpius in the east (see the star-chart in Fig. 1).

A2. Nine elements in the composition of the tauroctony are star-talk signs for
constellations (see the drawings of tauroctonies reproduced in Figs. 5 and 6). The
lion and the crater are elements particularly in tauroctonies from the Rhine and
Danube provinces (see Fig. 6 — VI 118); the other elements are ubiquitous.

SOL

LUNA

CAUTES

CAVE

CAUTO-
PATES

WHEAT
EAR

SCORPION SNAKE DOG

Fig. 5. Tauroctony (V417), after Cumont 1896: 194, fig. 19

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

195

CRATER LION

Fig. 6. Tauroctony (VI 118), after Cumont 1876: 374, fig. 283

(1). Bull means Taurus.

(2). Cautes and Cautopates: {a) as twins mean Gemini; (b) as the scene's

margin-definers: torchbearer on right means Taurus, torchbearer on left

means Scorpius.
(3). Dog means Canis Minor; also means Canis Major.
(4). Snake means Hydra.
(5). Lion means Leo.
(6). Crater (large two-handled vessel) means Crater; also, in the Danubian

motif of a lion plunging down into a crater, means (vessel of) Aquarius.
(7). Wheat ear(s) at tip of bull's tail means Spica (Alpha Virginis, the ear of

wheat in the hand of Virgo); thus, by metonomy (more precisely, pars pro

toto), also means Virgo.
(8). Raven means Corvus.
(9). Scorpion means Scorpius.

Note the alternative constellation meanings of the torchbearers (2), the dog (3),
and the crater (6). I shall discuss this polysemy in more detail later.

A3. All nine constellation signs are 'iconic' signs, in that they resemble in
appearance what they signify. They are thus icons, not just symbols or arbitrary
signs, of their respective constellations. That the constellation figures are actually
human constructions is immaterial. The point to remember is that when humans
join in star-talk discourse two texts are written and read, the celestial text and its
facsimile in the human artefact. The authenticity of the human facsimile depends

1 96 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

on the closest possible correlation of its signs to the signs in the celestial text. This
is achieved by replication, by making the terrestrial signs icons of the celestial
signs. Iconic signs are /wro-glyphics.

The apparent exception proves the rule. Certainly the torchbearers, qua Taurus
and Scorpius {2b), the constellations which define the western and eastern
boundaries of the celestial map, do not resemble a bull and a scorpion. However,
they sometimes carry, or are otherwise closely associated with, a bull's head (or
small ox) and a scorpion as secondary attributes (Hinnells 1976: 43-5; Beck
1977: 3-5; 1988: 19-22). The occurrences are numerous enough to infer a
normative identity even when not explicit.

A4. Placement within the composition corresponds for the most part to the
relative placement of the signified constellation in the actual heavens. The
obvious exceptions are {a) the bull, which straddles the entire scene from right
to left, and (b) the raven, which has been moved upwards/northwards from its
proper celestial location relative to the neighbouring constellations. 3 The poly-
semous signs, of course, can only be 'correctly' located in respect of one of the two
constellation meanings. Thus, most obviously, the crater by position relative to
the other constellation signs means (or intends or signifies) Crater, not Aquarius.
The dog in the same context means Canis Minor, although Canis Major, being
not far distant, is also intended, though less precisely. The torchbearers in this
context of relative celestial position mean Taurus and Scorpius, for they flank and
define the scene of the bull-killing, just as the two constellations flank and define
the intended star-field.

Notice how I speak of 'meaning' rather than 'identity'. Questions posed in
terms of identity, where a case can be made for two or more alternatives, lead
either to paradox ('how can it be both this and that?') or to inappropriate
exclusion. In contrast, posing the same question in terms of the meaning of a
language sign invites the proper riposte, 'what's the context?' or 'give me the
whole sentence'. If you are asking, for example, about the meaning of the crater
and you tell me that the context is the Danubian motif of the lion plunging down
into the crater immediately below (as e.g. in V1958), I will tell you that the crater
means Aquarius and the motif refers to the vertical/north-south axis of the
tauroctony/star-chart's 'esoteric quartering' (of which more below). If, however,
you tell me that the context is the Rhine motif of the trio of signs — lion (left),
crater (centre), snake (right) — below the bull (as Fig. 6 = VI 1 18), I will tell you
that the crater means Crater and the trio of signs is part of a larger utterance
about the constellations between Taurus and Scorpius intended in and by the
composition. The example illustrates well how astral symbols in the tauroctony

3 The bull (= Taurus) fills the scene because it is the object of the action. The raven (— Corvus)
has been elevated because it is a bird and the natural place for a bird is aloft. If there is a point here, it
is that exegesis is often just a matter of common sense.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

197

Scorpius Libra Virgo

Leo Cancer

Canes

Hydra

Crater

Corvus

Gemini Taurus

■Summer Quadrant

Fig. 7. Southern paranatellonta to the summer quadrant of the zodiac

can and do function as language signs with agreed meanings. 4 The crater in the
two contexts is merely an instance of a homonym. It is not at all paradoxical.

A5. Of the nine constellations signified, five (Taurus, Gemini, Leo, Virgo,
Scorpius) lie on the band of the zodiac and are thus among those which gave
their names to the twelve 'signs' {zoidia), in the technical sense of the successive
30° sectors of the ecliptic through which the Sun passes in the course of the year.
Accordingly, their star-talk images signify both the zodiacal constellations and the
zodiacal signs, depending on context. The four extra-zodiacal constellations sign-
ified (Canis Minor, Hydra, Crater, Corvus) all lie to the south of the zodiac and are
paranatellonta' to, hence surrogates for, certain of the zodiacal constellations sign-
ified. Paranatellonta are literally stars or constellations which 'rise alongside' (i.e.
together with) specific other stars or constellations. We shall consider their sign-
ificance in due course. In linguistic terms a surrogate is a synonym, so we may say
that in certain contexts the paranatellonta function as synonyms of the zodiacal
constellations. 5 The relationship of the paranatellonta represented in the tauroctony
to the zodiacal signs is shown in bar form in Figure 7.

3. EXEGESIS (CONTINUED): B. SUN, MOON, MITHRAS,
BULL (AGAIN), CAVE

Bl. In the upper left corner of the tauroctony we regularly find an image of Sol,
the Sun god; in the upper right corner an image of Luna, the Moon goddess.
Frequently, these deities are shown with their chariots and teams, Sol in a
quadriga drawn by horses, Luna in a biga drawn by oxen. Obviously,

4 See above, Ch. 8, sect. 4, on 'crossing Sperber's bar'.

5 Rhetorically, the naming of a zodiacal constellation and its paranatellon together could be read/
heard as a hendiadys.

198 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

(10). Sol means the Sun.
(11). Luna means the Moon.

B2. What, then, of Mithras in the centre of the composition? What does the sign
'Mithras' mean in the tauroctony's star-talk discourse. The answer is literally spelt
out. The dedicatory inscription deo soli invicto mithrae tells us that

(12). Mithras means the Sun.

But is there not already a sign for the Sun, namely Sol in the upper left corner?
Of course there is. But remember that our subject here is language, not ontology
on the theological plane. The fact that the sign 'Sol' says 'Sun' does not preclude
the sign 'Mithras' from saying 'Sun' too. Again, it is simply a matter of synonyms.
And the fact that star-talk discourse in the tauroctony is unconstrained by the
linearity and temporal sequence of spoken or written language means that the
sign 'Sol' and the sign 'Mithras' can say 'Sun' simultaneously. Remember, too,
that we are concerned only with 'Mithras' as a star-talk sign. Nothing said in star-
talk precludes viewing the tauroctonous Mithras as a distinct character from the
Sun god, Sol, with whom he interacts in many other episodes in the mythic
narrative.

B3. In the star-talk lexicon used in the tauroctony, the most interesting of the
polysemous signs is the bull. The bull, as we have seen, means Taurus, as both
sign and constellation. It also means the Moon:

Bull (sign 1) means the Moon.

Why do I confidently claim this other meaning? First, it is warranted by a string
of mystery-cult meanings set out by Porphyry in De antro 18.

The ancients called the priestesses of Demeter Bees, as initiates of the earth goddess, and
the Maiden they called the Honey-sweet and the Moon who presides over genesis the Bee,
especially since the Moon is a bull and the exaltation of the Moon is Taurus, and souls going
into genesis are ox-born, 6 and he who secretly listens to genesis is the cattle-stealing god.

Since the 'cattle-stealing god' [bouklopos theos) means Mithras, 7 it is clear that this
mystery-talk belongs to his mysteries as much as to Demeter's and the Maiden's.
Secondly, as the same passage also declares, Taurus is the Moon's 'exaltation'
(hypsoma). This is pure star-talk. The 'exaltations' and 'humiliations' constituted
an astrological system whereby each of the planets was allotted a sign of the
zodiac in which it was powerful and another, directly opposite, in which it was

6 The allusion here is to the bougonia, a process described in Virgil, Georgic 4.2&\ — 314, by which
bees are supposedly generated spontaneously from the putrefying carcass of an ox.

7 M. J. Edwards (1993) denies this on the grounds that the phrase in the allegedly Eleusinian
context can only refer to Hermes. However, Edwards ignores the larger Mithraic context of the
entire De antro. More serious is the improper posing of mutually exclusive alternatives (it can't mean
Mithras because it means Hermes).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III
Leo 0° Cancer 0°

Libra

Scorpius

Capricorn 0° Aquarius 0°

Fig. 8. Tauroctony with zodiac (V810), after Cumont 1896: 389, fig. 304

199

Taurus 0°

Aries 0°

weak. The sign of the Moon's exaltation was Taurus, the sign of its 'humiliation'
(tapeinomd) Scorpius. By star-talk metonomy the sign 'bull' in the tauroctony
means 'Moon'.

The London tauroctony V810 (see Fig. 8) makes an explicit statement about
the different star-talk meanings of the sign 'bull' and their relationships. In the
upper right quarter of the composition notice the juxtapositioning of the head of
the sacrificial bull with the sign Taurus in the ring zodiac and of the latter with
the pair of oxen drawing Luna's chariot.

B4. If Mithras in the tauroctony means the Sun and the bull means the Moon,
then the encounter of Mithras and the bull means the conjunction of Sun and
Moon, the monthly event we call 'new moon', and the victory of the bull-killing
Mithras signifies, whatever its ulterior meaning, the Sun's triumph over the
Moon.

Note that the meanings 'new moon' and 'solar victory' are indisputable, once it
is agreed that star- talk is the special language of the Mithraic mysteries in general
and of the tauroctony in particular. One can argue about the meaning of symbols
indefinitely, but the ruling principle for language signs is that words mean what
they say. This principle holds regardless of any speaker's intent.

B5. We come finally to the sign 'cave'. Here again the sign's meaning is explicit.
From Porphyry De antro 6 and our discussion of the mithraeum in Chapter 7
(sects. 1 and 2) we know that for the Mithraists:

200 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

(13). Cave means universe.

In the context of the tauroctony, the cave at the mouth of which Mithras kills the
bull means specifically the entire celestial sphere, one hemisphere of which is
signified by the selected constellation signs.

4. EXEGESIS (CONTINUED): C. MAP AND VIEW;

BOUNDARIES AND ORIENTATION; TIME AND MOTION.

SIMILAR STRUCTURES: THE AUGURAL TEMPLUM AND

THE ANAPHORIC CLOCK

There are two ways in which we may 'read' the tauroctony as star-talk discourse.
One is by reading it as a map or chart, the other by reading it as a view of the
heavens. The distinction corresponds, except in one important respect, to that
between a geographical map and an actual view of an expanse of terrain. Where
the analogy fails is in respect of the terrestrial and celestial views. For while the
terrestrial view remains the same as one gazes in the same direction from a fixed
vantage point — a car or a cow may come into view or leave, but a hill or a house
stays where it is — the celestial view is constantly changing as the celestial bodies
(stars and constellations, Sun, Moon, and planets) rise and set in the twenty-four-
hour cycle.

C\{d). As view, then, the tauroctony represents a window on the heavens which
happens to be filled with the particular set of constellations signified. Twelve
hours earlier and twelve hours later there was and will be an entirely different set
of constellations filling the view.

The view is south-facing. It is defined by the horizon at the bottom and by the
zenith at the top; by east to the left and by west to the right. Although in relief
sculpture the tauroctony is usually composed in the shape of a rectangle
(a trapezium on Danubian stelai), the celestial window' should not be so
construed. The best approximation one can offer in diagram form is a composite
of the two sky-views reproduced in Figures 9 and 10. 8 Figure 9 represents the
left/east side of the view: Scorpius is rising; ahead of it are the zodiacal constel-
lations Libra, Virgo, Leo, and Cancer, and the chosen paranatellonta Hydra

8 The views are necessarily latitude-specific and epoch-specific. The latitude is that of Rome. The
epoch is 100 CE. The grid is based on the ecliptic, shown here as a dotted line. The co-ordinate lines
at right angles to the ecliptic mark the boundaries of the signs of the zodiac. The sign Cancer begins
(at the summer solstice — longitude 90°) to the west/right of the constellation Cancer and ends to
the east/left at the start of Leo (longitude 120^), some 3° short of the star Regulus. Due to
precession, the zodiacal constellations have parted company with the signs of the zodiac named
after them. The constellations have all shifted eastwards, so that the constellation Gemini is now,
nineteen centuries later, in the sign of Cancer, the constellation Cancer in the sign of Leo, and the
constellation Leo in the sign of Virgo.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

201

CAN IS MINOR
Procyon

Fig. 9. Constellations in the tauroctony rising from the east (concave celestial hemi-
sphere)

(tail), Corvus, Crater, Hydra (head), Canis Minor. Figure 10 represents the right/
west side of the view: Taurus is setting; following it are the zodiacal constellations
Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo; of the paranatellonta, Canis Major is setting, to be
followed by Canis Minor, Hydra (head), Crater, and Corvus. Figure 11 repre-
sents a more formalized version of the same view in its totality, with the zodiac
forming a circular frame.

One must bear in mind that this particular celestial view with Taurus setting
and Scorpius rising can only be seen at night during a limited time of the year.
While the Sun is travelling through the selected signs of the zodiac from Taurus
in the spring to Scorpius in the autumn, the scene is invisible — which is not to
say that it isn't there, could one but discern it through the Sun's glare. A Mithraist
wishing to view the actual scene with mortal eyes would have picked a night in
January or February when Cancer or Leo would have culminated at around
midnight. For a view earlier than midnight one would pick a night in a

202

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

CorvLs

leiades

Fig. 10. Constellations in the tauroctony setting in the west (concave celestial hemi-
sphere)

subsequent month, for a view later than midnight a night in an earlier month (i.e.
a month late in the preceding year).

The torchbearers construed as Gemini carry a subsidiary meaning in the
context of the tauroctony read as view. The celestial Twins are of course the
Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, who contract to share the latter's immortality,
spending alternate days in heaven and the underworld. Consequently, they
come to symbolize the two hemispheres defined by the horizon, the visible
hemisphere above and the invisible hemisphere below. This meaning was public
knowledge, so we may assume that it was explicit as well as implicit in the sign of
the mysteries' twin torchbearers. 9 Thus,

9 This meaning is rightly emphasized by Ulansey (1989: 112—16).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 203

▲
Zenith

\ LEO /

Autumn ^ ^ Summer

Equinox VIRGO HYDRA CANCER , Solstice

Spica (head)

LIBRA CRATER GEMINI

^ CORVUS CANIS MINOR ^

CANIS MAJOR
East SCORPIUS u^ d ,^m TAURUS West

CAPRICORN PISCES w _ .

Winter y V Spring

Solstice / AQUARIUS \ Equinox

Fig. 11. The circle of the zodiac and the tauroctony constellations

(sign 2) Cautes means the visible hemisphere; Cautopates means the invisible
hemisphere.

C\{b). As a map or star-chart the tauroctony represents a band of zodiacal
constellations together with their southern paranatellonta extending from Taurus
on the right of the map eastward to Scorpius on the left. In effect the map shows
half of the zodiac, a half of a circular band which has been cut and extended as an
elongated rectangle. As in a terrestrial map, north is at the top, south at the
bottom. A star-chart, then as now, inverts east and west. The east side of the
tauroctony is on the left, the west side on the right. Figure 1 is a star-chart of a
more conventional sort covering the same celestial field as the tauroctony. The
east-west line is the ecliptic, which is the median line of the band of the zodiac
and the apparent path of the Sun in his annual journey. The stars are plotted on
the chart in a rectilinear grid according to their coordinates in Ptolemy's cata-
logue (Aim. 7.5-8.1).

C2{a). To read star-talk in the tauroctony from left/east to right/west is to read in
the direction of universal daily motion. Universal motion is the apparent motion
of all celestial bodies around the heavens in a twenty-four-hour period. Looking
at the tauroctony as view rather than chart we see the celestial bodies rising on the

204 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

left, culminating in the centre, and setting on the right. Universal daily motion is
'uttered' principally in (i) the direction of the tauroctonous Mithras towards the
right/west with his cloak streaming out behind him as if in the rush of forward
impetus, and (ii) the direction of the chariots and teams of Sol and Luna (when
shown) which is almost always to the right, meaning that the Sun is mounting the
heavens in the east while the Moon is descending in the west.

C2(b). To read star-talk in the tauroctony from right/west to left/east is to read in
the direction of planetary motion, particularly in the direction of the annual
motion of the Sun around the ecliptic and of the monthly motion of the Moon
weaving from north to south and back again along the same medial path. (The
other five planets also move to and sometimes fro along the same path, but the
tauroctony does not speak of them.) 10 The tauroctony does not speak as 'loudly'
about this direction of solar and lunar motion as it does about the luminaries'
participation in universal motion. We can 'hear' it, though, on certain monu-
ments, for example the London tauroctony (V810) shown in Figure 8, where the
Bull in the ring zodiac rushes in the opposite direction from the oxen drawing
Luna's chariot (see above, sect. 3, B3) and the Lion likewise in the opposite
direction to Sol and his team of horses. The star- talk relationship implicit in the
latter parataxis (Leo next to the solar team, as Taurus next to the lunar) is that Leo
is the astrological 'house' of the Sun, just as Taurus is the Moon's 'exaltation'.

Leo's leftward/eastward direction in the zodiac of V810 is unusual. Normally,
in ring zodiacs which are properly oriented, in that the sequence of signs is
counterclockwise and thus corresponds to the sequence of the actual star groups
as one reads them in the heavens, Leo is represented facing or moving westward
or to the right. He confronts Cancer, not Virgo. That indeed is his direction in
the great majority of zodiacs. 11 So unless the designer of V810 has simply
'misspoken' in reversing Leo, we must assume that he intended to make some
statement thereby. The intent is obvious. He is drawing attention to the Sun's
annual motion in parataxis with the statement about the Sun's daily motion
inherent in the eastward direction of the ascending solar quadriga. In the
companion lunar statements in the upper right corner of the composition no
reversal of Taurus was needed, since leftward/eastward is the sign's proper
direction. 12 The abnormality in the direction of Leo is a good example of a
detail in the composition which opens a window on the designer's probable
intent. But even if Leo's reversal was mere coincidence, the star-talk utterance is
made. Words mean what they say. The statement is there on the monument for
all to read regardless of what the designer meant or did not mean.

10 Though see Beck 1988: 21-2.

11 See the catalogue in Gundel 1992. I have not made a precise count.

12 On the literary allusions to Taurus rising backwards see Hiibner 1982: 102, para. 2.133.1.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 205

C3. Since time is defined by celestial motion, direction in the tauroctony signifies
the temporal relationships 'before' and after', earlier' and 'later'.

(a) Daily time (universal motion): the flow of time is from left/east (means
'earlier') to right/west (means 'later').

(b) Annual time (solar motion) and monthly time (lunar motion): the flow of
time is from right/west (means 'earlier') to left/east (means 'later').

Once again our star-talk approach resolves a seeming contradiction. Left/east
cannot be both earlier and later, but it can mean either 'earlier' or 'later'
depending on the temporal context (daily time or annual/monthly time). More-
over, given the icon's freedom from linearity, both meanings can be conveyed
simultaneously.

Just as we found structures similar to the mithraeum qua 'image of the
universe' in the surrounding culture (above, Ch. 7, sects. 9-10), so we should
take note of two structures similar to the icon of the tauroctony, one to the
tauroctony as view, the other to the tauroctony as celestial map. The first I have
discussed in previous studies (Beck 1977: 9—11; 1994a). It is the Roman augural
templum, which is literally a field of view defined for the observation of bird flight
and bird cries ('auspicy' and 'augury') by a watcher facing south. The templum,
Varro reports (De lingua Latina 7.6-8), is so quartered that the left 'part' is to the
east, the right to the west, the front to the south, and the rear to the north. The
Roman augur or magistrate literally 'con-templates' (contemplare/-ari) his tem-
plum for significant avian behaviour. Just so, one might say, the competent
Mithraist 'con-templates' the celestial field of view which is his community's
tauroctony for relevant meaning.

Our second analogous structure parallels the tauroctony as celestial map. It is
the anaphoric clock (Vitruvius 9.8.8-15; Drachman 1954; Noble and Price
1968; Neugebauer 1975: 869-70). The dial of the anaphoric clock is literally a
map of the constellations engraved on a bronze plate. Part of one exemplar
survives, discovered near Salzburg a century ago (Benndorf et al. 1903; Price
1967: 592-3; Neugebauer 1975: 869-70). The principal constellations on the
preserved fragment are Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Andromeda, Perseus, and Auriga.
The line of the ecliptic was perforated with small holes: every two days a peg
representing the Sun was moved counterclockwise from one hole to the next,
tracking the Sun's annual progress around the ecliptic. (The fragment was
snapped off at this line of perforations, giving it the appearance of part of a
toothed gear wheel.) The entire dial rotated clockwise in the period of a twenty-
four-hour day. The rotation of the dial was thus synchronized with, and so
replicated, the rotation of the celestial sphere. In front of the rotating dial was
a stationary wire web of hour lines radiating in appropriate curves. Time was
'told' by observing the passage of the Sun-marker crossing beneath the hour lines
as the dial rotated. Like the more commonplace sundial, the anaphoric clock is

206 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

constructed as an 'image of the universe' to display the daily and annual travels of
the Sun. The following analogy holds:

anaphoric clock : tauroctony :: sundial : mithraeum

5. EXEGESIS (CONTINUED): D. FURTHER MEANINGS OF

THE TORCHBEARERS: THE LUNAR NODES; CELESTIAL

NORTH AND CELESTIAL SOUTH; HEAVENWARD AND

EARTHWARD. MEANINGS OF THE 'TYPICAL' AND

'UNTYPICAL' LOCATIONS (CAUTES LEFT AND

CAUTOPATES RIGHT VERSUS CAUTOPATES LEFT AND

CAUTES RIGHT)

The principal players in the tauroctony are Mithras and the bull. As agent-signs
in the discourse they mean 'Sun' and 'Moon', and those too are the meanings of
Sol and Luna in the upper corners of the composition. The tauroctony is thus
star-talking about the interaction of Sun and Moon — an essential point grasped
by Rutgers (1970 — see above, Ch. 7, sect. 4).

D 1 . Now the Sun and Moon travel essentially the same celestial route in the same
direction. The Sun's route, as we have noted many times, is the ecliptic, the
median line of the zodiac, while the Moon's is oblique to the ecliptic by
approximately 5 degrees. The points at which the lunar orbit and the solar
orbit intersect are known as the 'nodes' (Greek syndesmoi). The point at which
the Moon crosses the ecliptic from south to north is the 'ascending' node (Greek
anabibazon), and the point at which she crosses back again from north to south is
the 'descending' node (Greek katabibazon) (see Fig. 12).

Anabibazein and katabibazein are causative forms of compounds of the verb
bainein (to 'go'). Hence anabibazon means 'causing to go up' or 'he who causes to

Northern Limit
(+5°)

EAST

Descending node Ascending node N
Anabibazon = Katabibazon

Southern Limit
(-5°)

Fig. 12. The Moon's orbit in relation to the ecliptic

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 207

go up', and katabibazon means 'causing to go down' or 'he who causes to go
down' — more succinctly, 'upper' and 'downer' respectively. So it requires no great
feat of the imagination to infer that with their raised and lowered torches the twin
torchbearers in the tauroctony mean the lunar nodes. Specifically,

Cautes means Anabibazon, the ascending node, and Cautopates means Kata-
bibazon, the descending node.

I have discussed this pair of meanings and their interpretation in some detail in
Beck 1976a: 9-13 (= 2004c: 159-63); 1978: 88-106, 135-6 (= 2004c: 171-
90, 219-20); 1987£; 2001: 69-71; 2004c: 128, 327-8.

D2. The Moon's crossing of the ecliptic from south to north is represented as an
ascent and her passage back again from north to south as a descent. This is but
one instance of the semantic conflation of 'north' with 'up' and 'south' with
'down', a conflation as routine in Greek astronomy as in common parlance today.
In star-talk we may properly call it a dead metaphor.

It follows that a pair of star-talk agent-signs one of whom carries his torch
upright and the other inverted signify north and south, northerly and southerly,
northward and southward. Specifically,

Cautes means north/northern/northward, and Cautopates means south/
southern/southward.

D3. There is however an ambiguity in the language of Greek astronomy — hence
in star-talk as spoken by mortals — concerning the meaning of 'up' and 'down'.
Up and down, above and below, ascent and descent refer not only to north and
south, northern and southern, northward and southward, but also to the location
of the spheres of the universe relative to the central earth and to motion 'upward'
or 'downward' through them. 13 One 'ascends' from the globe of earth to the
sphere of the Moon; thence in the standard order of Hellenistic astronomy
through the spheres of Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and
finally to the sphere of the fixed stars. 14 One 'descends' in the opposite direction,
from the sphere of the fixed stars downward through the spheres of the planets.
Accordingly,

Cautes means ascent from earth through the spheres of the planets to the
sphere of the fixed stars and Cautopates means descent in the opposite
direction.

These meanings take on immense importance in the context of the mystery of
'the soul's descent and departure back out again' (Porphyry, De antro 6) which we
have seen to be so central to the business of Mithraists in their mithraea.

1 3 Technically, the term 'depth' {bathos) and, less frequently, 'height' {hypsos, altitudo) are used for
a planet's distance from earth. See Neugebauer 1975: 802 (particularly on Pliny's usage).

14 On planetary orders (note the plural) in Mithraism see Beck 1988.

208 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

D4. We are now in a position to explain, in the sense of rendering a star-talk
exegesis of, the one major set of alternatives in the tauroctony's composition: the
placement of the torchbearers either with Cautes on the left in the east and
Cautopates on the right in the west or vice versa with Cautopates on the left in
the east and Cautes on the right in the west. The regional distribution of
these alternatives was plotted by John Hinnells (1976), who found that the
former type predominated in Rome and Italy in general and the latter in
the Rhine and Danube provinces. Tauroctonies of the latter type are the more
numerous overall, so Hinnells labelled them 'typical' and tauroctonies of the
other type 'untypical', though without any implication that the typical tauroc-
tonies were normative.

The untypical type is easier to explain. Cautes on the left signifies celestial
bodies, the Sun in particular, rising in the east; his colleague Cautopates on the
right signifies the Sun and all other celestial bodies setting in the west. The
tauroctony is here read as celestial 'view' (above, Cl(a)).

In the typical type Cautopates on the left means Scorpius qua southern sign
through which the Sun descends in the 'fall' of the year; Cautes on the right
means Taurus qua northern sign through which the Sun ascends in the spring of
the year. The tauroctony is here read as celestial 'map' (above, Cl(£)), although
one can also read it as 'view', in which case it is saying that Scorpius is rising in the
east while Taurus is setting in the west.

It is a curious fact that the lucidae of the two constellations Aldebaran (Alpha
Tauri) and Antares (Alpha Scorpionis) are conspicuous red stars separated by
roughly 180° of longitude, in other words half the ecliptic. From this fact was
generated the factoid that the stars are exactly opposite each other on the celestial
sphere, so that when one of them rises the other sets. 15 This factoid warrants the
further pair of meanings for the torchbearers:

Cautes means Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri) and Cautopates means Antares
(Alpha Scorpionis).

This is a good example of a somewhat recherche star-talk meaning which an
exegete could quite properly draw from the tauroctony but which it is possible
that no actual Mithraic exegete did in fact draw. Mithraic doctrine, as we
determined back in Chapter 4, is present on the monuments as a latent poten-
tiality as well as an intended actuality.

15 For the details see Beck 1977: 6—8. The author who preserves this factoid is Cleomedes
(1.8.46—51 Todd), a teacher of elementary astronomy, c.200 CE. Cleomedes transmits other highly
germane pieces of star-talk which I shall present in the following chapter.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 209

6. EXEGESIS (CONTINUED): E. BEING IN THE NORTH/
ABOVE OR IN THE SOUTH/BELOW VERSUS GOING

NORTHWARD/UP OR SOUTHWARD/DOWN. THE

SOLSTICES, THE EQUINOXES, AND YET FURTHER

MEANINGS OF THE TORCHBEARERS

As we have seen, the ecliptic, which is the Sun's orbit, is divided into two
semicircles, one in which the Sun is 'above' (to the north of) the celestial equator
and the other in which the Sun is 'below' (to the south of) the celestial equator.
The Sun enters the 'upper' semicircle on/at the spring equinox (temporally in
March, spatially at the start of the sign of Aries) and leaves it on/at the autumn
equinox (temporally in September, spatially at the start of the sign of Libra). The
Sun then enters the 'lower' semicircle and traverses the winter signs until it once
again crosses the equator on/at the spring equinox.

One may also divide the ecliptic into two semicircles at the solstices. In the
semicircle from the winter solstice (temporally in December, spatially at the start
of Capricorn) the Sun 'ascends' northward as far as the summer solstice (tem-
porally in June, spatially at the start of Cancer). In the semicircle from the
summer solstice back to the winter solstice the Sun 'descends' southward.

The dividing lines between these two pairs of semicircles are at right angles to
each other. Accordingly, the circle of the ecliptic/zodiac may be further divided
into four quadrants (see Fig. 13):

(1). In the spring quadrant from Aries through Taurus to Gemini the Sun is
in the north and ascending.

(2). In the summer quadrant from Cancer through Leo to Virgo the Sun is
still in the north but is now descending.

(3). In the autumn quadrant from Libra through Scorpius to Sagittarius the
Sun continues to descend but is now in the south.

(4). In the winter quadrant from Capricorn through Aquarius to Pisces the
Sun is still in the south but is once again ascending.

These four statements convey important definitional truths. They furnish the
star-talk terms and grammatical relationships on which one can articulate facts
about the seasonal cycle which governs the ebb and flow of life on earth. Note
especially the meanings which are drawn from the winter solstice as nadir,
the southern extreme of the solar orbit, the point at which the debilitated
Sun begins to wax again. Small wonder then that the date, the nominal solstice
on 25 December, becomes the Sun's birthday, the 'Natalis Invicti', as the
Calendar of Filocalus famously notes — to which phrase in Greek {heliou geneth-
lion) the less well-known Calendar of Antiochus appends 'light increases' {auxei

210

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

Descending
Sun

(2) 'exaltation

humiliated' / |_ eo

CAUTOPATES

soul gate — descent

NORTH

Summer Solstice

'high' point

MITHRAS

Autumn
Equinox

(3) 'humiliation
humiliated

(1) 'exaltation
exalted'

|P rin 9 MITHRAS
Equinox

(4) 'humiliation
exalted'

'low' point

Ascending

Winter Solstice

Sun

SOUTH

soul gate — ascent

Sun's birthday: light increases'

CAUTES

Fig. 13. A Mithraic version of a star-talk story of the solar year

phos). 16 According to Macrobius (Sat. 1.18.10), not only was the Sun's birthday
celebrated at the winter solstice but he was also displayed as a baby on that day:
'These differences in age [in the representations of various gods] relate to the Sun,
who is made to appear very small (parvulus) at the winter solstice. In this form
the Egyptians bring him forth from the shrine on the set date to appear like a tiny
infant (veluti parvus et infans) on the shortest day of the year.'

In many cultures, perhaps universally, 'up' correlates with success, victory, and
'high' status and 'down' with failure, defeat, and 'low' status. Since star-talk
equates 'north' with 'up' and 'south' with 'down', it follows that 'north' in certain
star-talk contexts means 'success/victory/high status' and 'south' means 'failure/
defeat/low status'.

The standard seasonal quartering of the ecliptic/zodiac formalizes and ex-
presses in star-talk the important distinction between success and succeeding,
between failure and failing. At the pinnacle of success one can start to fail, and at

16 Calendar of Filocalus, Salzman 1990: 149-53; Calendar of Antiochus, Boll 1910: 16, 40-4.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 211

the nadir of failure one can start to succeed. At the winter solstice the weakened
Sun can sink no further to the south; he begins again the climb back northward
to overpowering heat and brilliance.

The astrologer Antiochus of Athens captured well the significance of the four
quadrants in respect of power and status by applying the terminology of 'exalt-
ation' and 'humiliation'. 17 We have already encountered the terms as indicating a
pair of opposite signs of the zodiac, one of which is a planet's 'exaltation', the
other its 'humiliation' (above, sect. 3, para. B3). In the present context, they are
applied to the solar quadrants (CCAG 7.128):

(1) The Sun ascends in the north from Aries to the start of Cancer;
accordingly his exaltation is said to be exalted {hypsos hypsoutai) . 18

(2) From Cancer to the start of Libra he descends in the north; so his
exaltation is said to be humiliated {hypsos tapeinoutai) , since from the
zenith he begins to be abased.

(3) From Libra to Capricorn he descends in the south; so his humiliation is
said to be humiliated {tapeinon tapeinoutai) .

(4) From Capricorn to Aries he ascends in the south; so his humiliation is said
to be exalted {tapeinon hypsoutai), since from the nadir he begins to be
exalted.

It is impossible to overestimate the metaphorical freight carried by the star-talk
utterances of the solar journey. In addition to the ebb and flow of the seasonal,
natural cycle, the Sun's stages and progressions (high or low, upward or down-
ward?) speak — or can be made to speak — of success and failure both as states and
as tendencies in all activities human and divine.

We may accordingly assign the following additional star-talk meanings to the
torchbearers in (and beyond) the tauroctony:

El. Cautes means the northern/higher semicircle of the ecliptic and the
spring and summer signs of the zodiac. Cautopates means the southern/lower
semicircle and the autumn and winter signs.

E2. Cautes means the semicircle of the ecliptic in which the Sun ascends
northward; hence the winter and spring signs. Cautopates means the semi-
circle of the ecliptic in which the Sun descends southward; hence the summer
and autumn signs.

E3. Cautes means the summer solstice where/when the Sun is at his
northern extreme and zenith. Cautopates means the winter solstice where/
when the Sun is at his southern extreme and nadir.

17 It is probable that Antiochus first applied the terminology to a lunar quartering which we shall
meet in a later section. Throughout this chapter I avoid the customary translation 'depression' for
Greek tapeinoma - Latin depressio. 'Depression' today both carries irrelevant psychological conno-
tations and fails to convey the proper implications of low status.

18 Helios may be the grammatical subject of hypsoutai and hypsos an internal accusative: 'he is
exalted in respect of his exaltation'. The meaning remains unchanged. The same goes for the other
three sentences.

212 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

E4. Cautes means the spring equinox where the Sun is at the midpoint of
his ascent northward. Cautopates means the autumn equinox where/when the
Sun is at the midpoint of his descent southward.

E5. Cautes means ascent northward from the winter solstice. Cautopates
means descent southward from the summer solstice.

One of these meanings (E5) we have encountered already: Cautes as ascent
from the winter solstice, Cautopates as descent from the summer solstice. It is the
prime meaning of the torchbearers in the mithraeum where, as we saw in Chapter
7, it is a crucial definition in the construction of the mithraeum's own meaning as
'universe'. Meaning E5, as we also saw, is one of the few pieces of Mithraic star-
talk preserved in a literary source, Porphyry De antro nympharum 24: Mithras 'at
his proper seat ... on the equator ... at the equinoxes' has Cautopates on his right
at the summer solstice and Cautes on his left at the winter solstice.

These meanings are naturally crucial to Mithraic anthropology and soteriology.
It is not just the Sun who begins to descend from the summer solstice and to ascend
from the winter solstice. The human soul too begins its descent into genesis through
the gate of the summer solstice in Cancer and completes its ascent 'back out again'
into apogenesis through the gate of the winter solstice in Capricorn. In talk about
the Sun's seasonal descent and ascent the torchbearers carry their E5 meaning:
descent from celestial north southward and ascent from celestial south northward;
in talk about the descent and ascent of souls they carry their D3 meaning: descent
inwards and downwards to earth, ascent outwards and upwards to heaven. This a
good example of a shift in meaning accompanying a shift from one domain to
another. In my descriptive template (Ch. 1, sects. 1 and 3) I postulated four
'domains' in which 'the initiate apprehends the "axioms" and "themes" ' of the
mysteries. The second of these domains is 'the cosmos', the fourth 'the destiny of
human (especially initiates') souls'. In star-talk in the fourth domain the torchbearers
will probably carry their D3 meaning, while in the second domain only a narrower
context ('what particular aspect of the cosmos?') will indicate their meaning.

7. EXEGESIS (CONTINUED): F. TWO PARADOXES:
(1) COLD NORTH AND HOT SOUTH VERSUS HOT NORTH

AND COLD SOUTH; (2) DESCENDING FROM HEAVEN

AND GROWING UP ON EARTH VERSUS DYING DOWN ON

EARTH AND ASCENDING TO HEAVEN. TERRESTRIAL

MEANINGS OF THE TORCHBEARERS

The solstices are archetypal 'turning points' {tropai). At the summer solstice the
Sun is 'up' at the northern limit of his orbit where he turns back 'down' south; at
the winter solstice he is 'down' at the southern limit and turns back 'upward'

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 213

towards the north. In the Mithraic mysteries then either torchbearer can mean
either solstice: it simply depends on the sentence uttered.

There is however a more fundamental paradox concerning north and 'south
which affects the meanings of the torchbearers. Fortunately, this paradox is posed
explicitly in our prime literary source for Mithraic star-talk, Porphyry's De antro
nympharum (21—9). In the Mithraic mysteries Cautopates is located at the gate of
descent at the summer solstice in the north and Cautes at the gate of ascent at the
winter solstice in the south, locations warranted, as we saw in the preceding
section, by the star-talk truism that from a zenith one can only descend and from
a nadir one can only rise. But although that truism is latent in Porphyry's
explanation, the actual logic pursued is quite different. Cautopates presides
over descent into mortality from the north because the north with its invigorating
cold is appropriate to souls entering mortal genesis, while his colleague Cautes
presides over ascent via apogenesis into immortality from the south because the
heat of the south 'dissolves' or 'releases' (dialuei). 19

But wait a moment: how can the summer solstice where/when the Sun reaches
his zenith be 'cold' and how can the winter solstice where/when the Sun reaches
his nadir be 'hot'? The answer is that we have shifted domains. In the heavens
north is indeed 'hot' and south 'cold'; but on earth north is just as surely 'cold'
and south 'hot'. Star-talk here asserts a paradox, but it does not flatly contradict
itself.

The paradox here explicated is especially manifest in the design and seating of
the mithraeum (see above, Figs. 2 and 3). The initiates on the bench to the right
of Mithras are 'hot' because they occupy the signs of the zodiac where the Sun
resides in spring and summer; they are 'cold' because the very same signs are
northerly. Conversely their colleagues opposite on the bench to Mithras' left
are 'cold' because they occupy the signs of the autumnal and winter Sun, but they
are 'hot' because those signs are southerly.

The distinction between heavenly and earthly meanings resolves, or rather
clarifies, a second paradox. 20 One of Cautopates' meanings in the celestial
domain and his primary meaning in the anthropological/soteriological domain
is descent into mortal genesis; and the corresponding meaning of Cautes is
apogenesis and ascent into immortality. However, these meanings have been
largely overlooked by Mithraic scholars in the main stream, 21 who have usually
interpreted the torchbearers first as symbols of the rising and setting Sun or of the
Sun in spring and the Sun in autumn and secondly as symbols of the seasonal
waxing and waning of vegetation. Terrestrially, on this interpretation,

The argument is made in terms of the different effects of the north and south winds
On the two paradoxes addressed in this section see Beck 1994*2: 1 14, n. 31.
But see Campbell 1968: 29-43.

214 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

Cautes signifies seed-time, growth, and the season of spring, while Cautopates
signifies harvest, and the dying down of vegetation in autumn ('fall' in North
American usage).

This terrestrial sense, in which Cautes is genetic and Cautopates apogenetic,
appears to contradict the celestial sense in which it is Cautopates who means
(descent into) genesis and Cautes who means (ascent into) apogenesis. The
contradiction is more apparent than real, and it can be resolved by pointing to
the now familiar distinction between proceeding into a state and being in a state.
But the paradox so generated must be allowed to stand as an element — a very
important element — in the Mithraists' construction of reality, their world as they
comprehended it. It is of course a version of the dualist soma/sema model: 'the
body is a tomb'; life is death and death is life.

Here the exegete must quickly put on his interpreter's hat and warn that the
paradox as articulated in the mysteries is not anti-materialistic. The world in
which we grow and flourish is a good place. You will scan the monuments in vain
for signs of hatred of the flesh or the natural order. Robert Turcan (1982) was
surely right in characterizing Mithraic 'salvation' as 'bio-cosmic (my emphasis)
and the mysteries as robustly life-affirming; right too in pointing to Mazdaism as
the likely source of this attitude.

To conclude, this is a good example of the limits of literal star-talk exegesis.
Star-talk, at least in this context, does not tell you whether celestial descent and
terrestrial growth are good things or bad things or merely indifferent. That sort of
question requires other, more traditional skills in comparing and interpreting
religious representations. For my own money, I would hazard that the Mithraic
line was 'genesis good, apogenesis better', but I cannot demonstrate it in the way
I can demonstrate the mysteries' star-talk propositions.

8. EXEGESIS (CONTINUED): G. WHERE AND WHEN?
'MITHRAS THE BULL-KILLER' MEANS 'SUN-IN-LEO'

(1) Since the tauroctony represents a view or map of the heavens extending
from Taurus in the west to Scorpius in the east (above, sect. 2, Al),

(2) and since the torchbearers on either side of the scene signify Taurus and
Scorpius (above, sect. 2, A2.2, A3),

(3) and since Mithras in the centre of the scene means the Sun (above, sect.
3, B2),

(4) and since Leo as sign and constellation is midway between Taurus and
Scorpius,

(5) it follows that the tauroctonous Mithras means Sun-in-Leo. In temporal
terms, this means the Sun during the last third of July and the first two thirds
of August.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 215

Notice that we have deduced the meaning of the tauroctonous Mithras by star-
talk logic from the four premises. We did not reach the conclusion inductively by
adducing evidence from within and outside the mysteries to establish that the
initiates did in fact ascribe that identity to Mithras as bull-killer.

The weaknesses of the inductive approach are all too evident. There is almost
no internal evidence (other than the dedications which tell us that Mithras is a
god, that he is the Sun, and that he is invincible) for the ascription of further
esoteric identities to the tauroctonous Mithras by the initiates. Consequently, we
can only assemble data to show that since Leo is the Sun's own 'house' and a fiery
sign associated with sovereignty, and since the Sun when in Leo is at the acme of
his seasonal power, Sun-in-Leo would have been a highly appropriate identity for
the Mithraists to have ascribed to their god. 22 Certainly such data from the
ancient 'encyclopaedia' is germane and one may readily agree that the ascription
of the postulated identity was highly probable. But between 'highly probable' and
'actually did' there will always be a gap — a gap which 'must therefore have
ascribed' does not span.

In asserting Sun-in-Leo as the star-talk meaning of the sign 'Mithras' in the
context of the tauroctony we are on altogether more secure ground. Once we
agree that the question is one of language and semantics, the deduced meaning
Sun-in-Leo stands or falls on the logic and accuracy of the four premises which
lead to it. If you are going to tell me that Mithras does not mean Sun-in-Leo, you
must tell me what is wrong with my reading of the text of the tauroctony or with
my understanding of the grammar of its language.

Sun-in-Leo is the meaning of Mithras in the tauroctony read as 'map' (above,
sect. 4, CI (£)). In the tauroctony read as 'view' (CI (a)), Mithras means the
culminating midday Sun at the zenith of his daily journey from his rising in the
east/left to his setting in the west/right.

When the Sun blazes at the zenith no other celestial body is visible. Likewise,
for the month when the Sun is in Leo, the stars of Leo and nearby constellations
are invisible, since whenever they are above the horizon so is the Sun. There is
thus an implicit irony in the tauroctony: you cannot read it with corporeal eyes,
only with the mind's eye.

There is however, one creature who can gaze at Sun-in-Leo (or anywhere else)
and still 'see' — the eagle; and from Porphyry (De abstinentia 4.16) we know that
in esoteric parlance the Fathers of Mithraic communities were called 'eagles'.
Richard Gordon in his exploration of the animal lore of the ancient 'encyclo-
paedia' explains why the sobriquet was so appropriate (1980£: 66-7). The ability
to look at the Sun without blinking is the test for legitimacy by which eagles
recognize and acknowledge their true offspring (Aelian, De natura animalium
2.26). On this criterion, we may now add, the Eagle- Father is he who can bear to
gaze on the cult icon and read it with undazzled eyes.

22 This necessary task I have already performed (Beck 1994£: 44—7).

216 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

9. FROM EXEGESIS TO INTERPRETATION. AN ESOTERIC
QUARTERING OF THE HEAVENS

The boundary between exegesis and interpretation is quite fluid. The end of the
preceding section is a good example of how the former flows seamlessly into the
latter. We brought together a basic meaning — actually the basic meaning — in
the star-talk discourse of the tauroctony (Mithras means Sun), an esoteric
sobriquet (Mithraic Fathers were called 'Eagles'), and a factoid about actual
eagles looking at the Sun. From these three items we inferred something —
admittedly a rather small something — about the ethos and world view of the
Mithraic mysteries, namely the moral and intellectual qualifications for viewing
the tauroctony.

Notice first that the object of our interpretation here was not the tauroctony
itself but the Mithraic mysteries as a whole; secondly, that the interpretation,
unlike the prior exegesis, is not completely secure. We simply do not know
whether all those connections were in fact widely made, or indeed whether they
were ever made explicitly. Nevertheless, what we can say with some confidence is
that they were there for the making.

From this point in the chapter we shall be blending exegesis with interpret-
ation, and the proportion of the latter to the former will gradually increase. There
is no need to track the shift with any precision. In the end, exegesis and
interpretation are but two stages in a single enterprise. Notionally it is important
to distinguish them, but in any given instance it is not crucial to say at what point
the one yields to the other.

I want to continue by posing the question, why in the tauroctony do the
mysteries adopt an unusual quartering of the heavens? In place of the usual
quartering by the solstitial and equinoctial signs (or points), the tauroctony
declares a celestial quartering by the signs which follow the four tropic signs:
Taurus, Leo, Scorpius, and Aquarius. In astrology these are called the 'solid'
{sterea, solida) signs because they 'confirm' the terrestrial conditions introduced by
the four tropic signs (Bouche-Leclercq 1899: 152). This quartering is explicitly
stated by (1) the torchbearers on the east/left and west/ right margins of the
tauroctony with their 'Scorpius' and 'Taurus' meanings (above, sect. 2, A2.2{b));
(2) the tauroctonous Mithras in the upper centre meaning 'Sun-in-Leo' (above,
sect. 8); (3) the Danubian motif of the lion plunging down into the crater
signifying Leo-Aquarius as the tauroctony's vertical axis (above, sect. 2, A2.6
and A4), at right angles to the horizontal Taurus-Scorpius axis.

'Why?' asks an interpretive question. 'Why' questions often arise in the
context of something unusual. Had the composition of the tauroctony followed
the standard quartering by tropic (i.e. equinoctial and solstitial) signs, the
question would not arise at all.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 217

Our first answer is commonsensical — and none the worse for that. Mithras
slew a bull, not a ram, and he did so with a scorpion present and active, not a pair
of scales; a lion, moreover, is a much more impressive symbol of solar power than
a crab. True enough, and probably sufficient; certainly, a salutary reminder that
quartering the zodiac was not the primary concern of the designer(s) .

So is the question improper? Should we just say that the appearance of an
unusual celestial quartering is a mere epiphenomenon of the subject matter. After
all, when zodiacs are explicit parts of the composition, as in the London
tauroctony V810 (Fig. 8), the standard quartering, not the esoteric quartering,
is usually observed.

This would be an overreaction. Epiphenomenon it may be in terms of implicit
priorities, but the esoteric quartering is a fact of the composition, a star-talk
statement actually made, particularly and emphatically by the torchbearers
defining the east-west, left-right, horizontal axis of the tauroctony as star-
chart. Consider also the scorpion. Is its presence really determined by a prior
narrative of the bull-killing which included all the accessory animals, or is it
rather determined by star-talk logic which requires it as the complement to
Taurus the Bull in statements about opposition and the tauroctony s east-west,
left-right, horizontal axis? Surely the latter. In the priorities of the composition
the bull precedes Taurus but Scorpius precedes the scorpion. If, then, the esoteric
quartering does not drive the composition, it is certainly more than a meaning-
less epiphenomenon.

In his interpretation of the tauroctony (1989 — see above, Ch. 7, sect. 4) David
Ulansey was surely right to focus on the privileging of Taurus and Scorpius in the
composition. His mistake was to draw the implausible inference that Taurus and
Scorpius were selected by the designers because they were the constellations in
which the equinoctial points had resided two millennia before. This hypothesis
about the design and composition implies that the designers knew the then very
recherche fact that the equinoxes do indeed slowly shift position, the so-called
precession of the equinoxes. Very few serious scholars either of the Mithraic
mysteries or of the history of astronomy have accepted Ulansey 's theory. My own
view (Beck 2004c: 243-4) is that, wrong though the theory is, this much can be said
for it: had you explained precession to a Mithraic Father and pointed out that the
torchbearers, the scorpion, and the bull could be related to the equinoxes of an
earlier era, he would have gratefully added it to his portfolio of explications. Simply
as a matter of star-talk syntax, the archaic equinoxes were and are potentially present
as meanings in the composition of the tauroctony. What makes it extremely
improbable that precession was ever elicited as a meaning, let alone deliberately
encoded in the tauroctony as a 'plumbed-in' meaning, is the need to postulate
Mithraists or Ur-Mithraists with the requisite knowledge. Nothing in the reception-
history of the astronomical theory of precession suggests that such people ever
existed. Since one can account for Mithraism's esoteric quartering without invoking
them, they serve no useful function and are best dismissed.

218

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

To ascertain the significance of the esoteric quartering in context we must first
explore its occurrence in star-talk outside the Mithraic mysteries. Were there
precedents for the esoteric quartering in the public domain? Or, to avoid the
implication of temporal priority, do we find parallels to our 'esoteric' quartering
of the zodiac in secular astrology?

There are in fact two parallels, and both are highly germane. The first is the
system of planetary 'houses' (Bouche-Leclercq 1899: 182-92). In Graeco-Roman
astrology the signs of the zodiac are distributed among the planets as their
'houses' {oikoi), as places where by definition they are most 'at home' and
hence most powerful and influential. The problem of dividing twelve signs
among seven planets was solved by assigning one house to each of the two
luminaries and two each to the remaining five planets. Leo was assigned to the
Sun and Cancer to the Moon. In the order of the signs (counterclockwise) from
Leo and against the order of the signs (clockwise) from Cancer, the other signs are
then distributed pair by pair to the other planets in the order of the planets'
distance from the earth (see table). Thus Mercury, the nearest of the planets
proper, acquires Virgo and Gemini, and so on in opposite directions around the
two semicircles of the zodiac to Capricorn and Aquarius, the final pair, which fall
to Saturn, the most distant of the planets.

Planet

Diurnal/Solar House

Nocturnal/Lunar House

Sun

Leo

Moon

Mercury

Virgo

Venus

Libra

Mars

Scorpius

Jupiter

Sagittarius

Saturn

Capricorn

Cancer

Gemini

Taurus

Aries

Pisces

Aquarius

Vertically, then, the system of houses divides the zodiac at the cusp of Cancer and
Leo at the 'top' and the cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius at the 'bottom'. This
vertical division is of course the same as that of our esoteric quartering.

May we then say that the system of planetary houses was 'structured into' the
composition of the tauroctony? Yes, as a truism, in that the tauroctony, structured
as it is, cannot help talking 'houses' in its star-talk utterances. Probably, but not
certainly, in the sense that the original designer(s) had the system of houses in
mind when they composed the icon. What the tauroctony actually says is 'Sun
in Leo, his house', and there are indications, to be noted below, that the icon was
in fact read that way.

Does the tauroctony also say 'Moon in Cancer, her house'? We have seen that a
particular tauroctony (V810: above, sect. 4, Q2{b); and see Fig. 8) alludes to

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 219

Taurus as the Moon's exaltation 'in the same breath', one might say, as it alludes
to Leo as the Sun's house 23 But the composition in general, as we have also seen
(above, sect. 3, B4), speaks of an encounter of the Sun, the meaning in context of
the sign 'Mithras the bull-killer', and the Moon, the meaning in context of the
sign 'bull killed by Mithras'. So, yes, the tauroctony does indeed say that the
Moon is in Cancer, her house, or more precisely at the end of Cancer where she
encounters the Sun at the beginning of Leo, his house. 24

Paradoxically, of all the extant framing zodiacs on Mithraic monuments it is
the zodiac surrounding a birth scene, not a tauroctony, which speaks most clearly
of planetary houses. A monument from Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall (V860)
shows the young Mithras emerging from the lower half of a split eggshell (rather
than the customary rock), sword and torch in hand. A zodiac arches around and
above him in the shape of a horseshoe, the open side at the bottom. The signs
begin on the lower left side with Aquarius and run clockwise around to Capri-
corn on the lower right. 25 With six signs on either side, the zodiac culminates at
the cusp of Cancer and Leo. Those two signs are separated from the ten below by
the sword and torch respectively. The following table is a schematization of the
two halves of the zodiac (the planets 'at home' in each are shown in parentheses).

Left Right

Cancer (Moon) Leo (Sun)

sword torch

Gemini (Mercury) Virgo (Mercury)

Taurus (Venus) Libra (Venus)

Aries (Mars) Scorpius (Mars)

Pisces (Jupiter) Sagittarius (Jupiter)

Aquarius (Saturn) Capricorn (Saturn)

That the disposition of the signs announces the system of planetary houses is
obvious. Note that in this structure a 'horizontal' division effecting an actual
quartering into four equal quadrants would be irrelevant. Consequently it is
absent from the composition because it would not say anything meaningful. The

23 Another tauroctony (V75 Sidon) so places its zodiac that Taurus is shown leaping towards the
bust of Luna, and Aries, the sign of the Sun's exaltation, towards the bust of Sol. To achieve this effect
while preserving the zodiac's proper counterclockwise order the busts of the luminaries are reversed:
Sol is on the right, Luna on the left. In this tauroctony the representation of the scorpion does
double duty as both sign of the zodiac and animal at the bull's genitals.

24 Modern Leo 0° = ancient Cancer 30".

25 Aquarius, most unusually, is represented like Capricorn as a fish-tailed creature. The assimi-
lation, as well as balancing the composition at the two ends of the zodiac, suggests what the two signs
have in common: they are the two houses of the same planet, Saturn.

220

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

SOLAR / DIURNAL HOUSES

* Descending northern limit

Moon hi g h P oint

Lunar / Nocturnal
Houses ▼

▼

^/^ Le0

Cancer ^\

(1) 'exaltation

> / House of Sun

House of Moonx.

(4) 'exaltation

humiliated' /

Virgo

Gemini \

exalted'

NORTH WIND

DESCENDING

ASCENDING

KATABIBAZON
= Descending

Libra

(6 steps)

( 6ste P s > \ Exaltation
TAURUS ° fMoon =

Node = Moon's
Humiliation

SCORPIUS
I SOUTH WIND

\ DESCENDING

AriGS I

SOUTH WIND I ANABIBAZON
ASCENDING / ANABIBA ^ UN

(6 steps)

(2) 'humiliation, \

Sagittarius

Pisces/

(3) 'humiliation

humiliated'

\ Capricorn

Aquarius /

exalted'

\Houses of Saturn

('highest' planet) / <\

▲

low point
southern limit

Fig. 14. A star-talk story of an ideal draconitic month

Ascending
Moon

meaningful horizontal divide (sword and torch) separates the houses of the two
luminaries from the houses of the remaining five planets. 26

The second parallel to our esoteric quartering in exoteric astrology is what we
may call the lunar quartering (Fig. 14). The lunar quartering effects for the Moon
what the standard quartering by tropic points effects for the Sun: it divides the
zodiac into four equal quadrants in which the Moon is (1) north of the ecliptic
and moving northward, (2) still north of the ecliptic but moving southward, (3)
south of the ecliptic and still moving southward, and (4) still in the south but now
moving northward. All the meanings which we saw attached to the standard or solar
quartering remain, in particular those of exaltation' and 'humiliation'; likewise the
meanings of the torchbearers which we examined in section 6 (El— 5). What has
changed is the definition of the quadrants: the cardinal points have shifted 30
degrees (one hour on a clock dial) counterclockwise.

Here anyone at all knowledgeable in astronomy may properly object that the
lunar quartering is astronomically nonsensical. Indeed it is, for while the solar

26 On the zodiac of V860 and the planetary houses see also Beck 1988: 35—9.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 221

quartering is based on astronomical fact — the Sun really is to the north of
(above') the equator from the start of Aries to the end Virgo — the lunar
quartering is a fiction. The Sun does indeed always cross the celestial equator
from south to north at the start of Aries, but the equivalent proposition for the
Moon is false: the Moon does not always cross the ecliptic from south to north at
the start of Taurus. If she does so one month, the following month she will cross
the ecliptic at a point slightly to the west in Aries, and so on for the next 18.6
years until she returns once more to the vicinity of her original crossing point. In
other words, the lunar nodes themselves circle the ecliptic in a period of
approximately 18.6 years. The lunar quartering is thus an arbitrary construct
which freezes the Moon's orbit in a fixed track with respect to latitude. There was,
presumably, some astrologically cogent reason for fixing the ascending node at
the start of Taurus, the northern limit at the start of Leo, the descending node at
the start of Scorpius, and the southern extreme at the start of Aquarius; but what
it was we do not yet know. My sense is that it is part of the definition of an ideal
lunar orbit and an ideal month within a certain tradition of star- talk to which the
Mithraic mysteries belonged.

The lunar quartering brings with it a peculiar idiom. The four quadrants of the
solar quartering, as we have seen, are seasonal: spring, summer, autumn, winter.
In the lunar quartering, one speaks of winds' (anemoi) north or south and of
'ascending' or 'descending' sectors, and it was customary to begin the quartering
not at the midpoint of ascent (the equivalent of the spring equinox) but at the
northern extreme (the equivalent of the summer solstice). 27 To complicate mat-
ters further, the quadrants are measured not in 30° signs (3 x 30° = 90°) but in
'steps' {bathmoi) of 15°. Each quadrant thus consists of six steps (6 x 15° = 90°).
The system is described by the second-century ce astrologer Vettius Valens in a
chapter entitled 'How to find the steps and winds of the Moon' {Anthologies 1.18).
Antiochus of Athens, who we saw applied the language of exaltation and humili-
ation to the solar quartering (above, sect. 6), also mentions it (CC4G7.128.14-
16). One may tell the story of a lunar cycle accordingly (Fig. 14):

1. Leo to Libra: North Wind descending: six steps down from zenith;
exaltation humiliated.

2. Scorpius to Capricorn: South Wind descending: six more steps down to
nadir: humiliation humiliated.

3. Aquarius to Aries: South Wind ascending: six steps up from nadir:
humiliation exalted.

4. Taurus to Cancer: North Wind ascending: six more steps up to zenith:
exaltation exalted.

27 This order is almost certainly related to the ancient astronomical practice of measuring ('for
reasons unknown', Neugebauer 1975: 80) the 'argument of latitude' from the Moon's northern
extreme, not from the ascending node as in modern practice.

222 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

The great historian of ancient astronomy, Otto Neugebauer, properly points out
that in astrology the wind of the Moon or other planet 'simply means the direction
of the motion in latitude and not an atmospheric phenomenon; probably "vector"
would better represent the actual meaning' (1975: 670-1). As someone seeking to
free ancient mathematical astronomy from the clutter of irrelevant metaphor, he is
of course right. But one person's trash is another's gold, and as a historian and
semiotician of star-talk in the Mithraic mysteries I value the 'winds' as a precious
lexical nugget. For example, it helps me read and better comprehend the meaning of
the two wind gods in the London tauroctony V810 (Fig. 8); likewise the inclusion
of the winds Boreas and Notos in Porphyry's extended treatment of the solstitial
soul-gates in the mysteries (see above, sect. 7). In star-talk in a religious context very
few signs 'simply' mean or mean only by metaphor.

The lunar nodes, it will be remembered, are star-talk meanings of the Mithraic
torchbearers (above, sect. 5, Dl). Cautes means Anabibazon, the ascending node,
and Cautopates means Katabibazon, the descending node. But we have already
established that as the limiting signs and constellations to the right/west and left/
east of the tauroctony as star- field Cautes means Taurus and Cautopates Scorpius
(sect. 2, A2.2{b)). It follows, then, syllogistically that:

Cautes means Anabibazon in Taurus; Cautopates means Katabibazon in
Scorpius.

We can read much the same sort of star-talk exegesis in a comment by a later
writer appended to Vettius Valens' chapter (1.18) on the 'steps' and 'winds' of the
Moon cited above: 28 'For Taurus is the exaltation (hypsomd) of the Moon and, as it
were (hoion), Anabibazon; and Scorpius as it were Katabibazon; and Leo as it were
the northern limit {peras) of Anabibazon; and Aquarius as it were the southern
limit of Katabibazon.' No direct influence from or on our piece of Mithraic
exegesis need be postulated. Both pieces merely belong to the same stream of star-
talk chatter, the same 'epidemic' (in Dan Sperber's sense) 29 of astral representa-
tions. Both have to do, I suggest, with the definition of an ideal lunar orbit.

10. THE IMPLICATIONS OF SUN-IN-LEO AND THE

ESOTERIC QUARTERING. CONJUNCTIONS AND

ECLIPSES; VICTORIES AND DEFEATS

An extraordinarily valuable but neglected snippet of Mithraic exegesis is pre-
served in the late antique scholiast to Statius' Thebaid, Lactantius Placidus. In the
Statius passage {Thebaid 1.719-20) Apollo is invoked under various names
ending with Mithras: ' ... or as Mithras beneath the rocks of a Persian cave

28 See David Pingree's edition (1986: 397, App. VII).

29 Sperber 1996; and see above, Ch. 1, sect. 2.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 223

twisting the horns loath to follow.' The allusion to the tauroctony, to the event if
not to the icon, is patent. 30 The scholiast has this to say (Cumont 1896: 47-8):

The sense is as follows: the Persians worship the Sun in caves, and here the Sun is called by
his proper name Mithras, who, because he suffers eclipse, is accordingly worshipped
inside a cave. He is the very Sun with a lion's face (leonis vultu), in Persian dress, and with
both hands pressing on the ox's horns. This reading relates to the Moon who, 'loath to
follow' her brother, gets in his way and obscures his light. The author has laid bare part of
the mysteries. The Sun, as if leading the Moon, his inferior, 'twists' the bull. The author
has placed the word 'horns' wonderfully well so as to bring out the meaning 'Moon' more
clearly, not the animal by which she is represented as conveyed. However, because this is
not the place to discuss the secrets of those gods along the lines of esoteric philosophy, let
us say a little about the images and metaphors [hendiadys for figuris] to which it is
entrusted. The ineffable Sun, because he treads upon and bridles the principal sign of the
zodiac, that is Leo, for that reason he too is represented with this [i.e. a leonine] visage (Sol
ineffabilis, quia principale signum inculcat etfrenat, leonem scilicet, idcirco et ipse hoc vultu
fingitur); or else because this god excels among the others in the violence of his divinity
and the onslaught of his power, as the lion among other wild beasts; or else because the
lion is a fierce and swift [hendiadys for rapidum] animal. The Moon, because close by she
overpowers and leads a bull, is accordingly represented as a cow.

Lactantius Placidus asserts that in the mysteries of Mithras, the name under
which the Persians worship the Sun, the god is represented with a lion's face. This
of course is patently false: the tauroctonous Mithras is entirely and always
anthropomorphic. The scholiast, it seems, had never set eyes on a tauroctony.
But just as clearly there is nothing in the text of Statius from which, in the usual
scholiast's way, he could have inferred Mithras' leonine visage. What, then, is the
origin of his error? The answer is obvious and simple: he or his source has
mistaken exegesis for description. He thought that because the tauroctonous
Mithras means Sun-in-Leo he must somehow have been represented as a lion.

Notice that the scholiast has also got hold of some of the star- talk logic behind
the meaning 'Sun-in-Leo': that Leo is the astrological house of the Sun. More-
over, he senses that Leo is somehow 'the primary sign' (principale signum).
However, even the import of this simple proposition he does not really under-
stand. Absurdly, he thinks it has to with the Sun 'trampling and bridling' (inculcat
etfrenat) Leo in the way that Mithras overpowers the bull. But as we have seen,
there are only two star-talk constructs in which Leo rules as the 'primary sign'.
One is the system of houses, in which Leo, as the Sun's house stands at the head of
the 'diurnal' houses; the other is the lunar quartering, the first quadrant of which
begins with Leo.

From the same star-talk exegesis of the tauroctony the scholiast received the
lunar meaning of the bull. A single word in the text reveals that he either received

30 As is often pointed out, Statius' Mithras grasps the bull by the horns, not by the nostrils as in
the standard composition of the icon.

224 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

it in garbled form or else himself misconstrued the more precise lunar meaning of
the bull: the Moon in Cancer, her house. The word is propius in the sentence, 'the
Moon, because close by she overpowers and leads a bull, is accordingly repre-
sented as a cow'.

The scholiast's argument is as follows: both luminaries overpower and master
an animal; the Sun overpowers a lion and is accordingly represented with a lion's
visage, the Moon overpowers a bull and is accordingly represented as a cow. If the
lion overpowered by the Sun is Leo, 'the leading sign', who then is the bull
overpowered by the Moon? Taurus the Bull, obviously. 31

Lactantius Placidus seems to be unaware or unconcerned that his argument
has parted company from the actual scene of the tauroctony in which what
Mithras overpowers is not a lion but a bull and the bull is not in a position to
overpower anything, being itself overpowered by Mithras. However, lack of
correspondence with the scene represented by Statius and the tauroctony is not
the scholiast's only problem. He speaks of the Moon overpowering Taurus 'close
by' {propius) the Sun overpowering Leo. But Taurus is not near Leo. It is three
signs away in quadrature. A further, formal difficulty is that it is not the case,
strictly speaking, that

Taurus : Moon :: Leo : Sun,

for while Leo is the Sun's house Taurus is not the Moon's house but rather the
Moon's exaltation.

Beneath the surface Lactantius Placidus' argument is sheer nonsense. But
nonsense, as every textual critic knows, often reveals more than does sense,
especially when it preserves enough to indicate an original sense. The original
exegesis which our scholiast has garbled is

Cancer : Moon :: Leo : Sun

where 'is to' means 'is the house of. The word propius confirms it, for Cancer is
indeed the sign 'near by' to the immediate west of Leo. Not finding a crab either
in Statius or in his source's description of the tauroctony, the scholiast substituted
Taurus. His talk of overpowering is simply a conflation of the scene of mastery in
the tauroctony and the power relationship inherent in the system of houses: a
planet has heightened power in his or her own house.

Behind the scholium is a piece of esoteric exegesis of the tauroctony actually
made, solid evidence that some learned Mithraist really did explicate the taur-
octony in terms of the encounter of the Sun and Moon on the cusp of their
respective houses, Leo and Cancer. As an immediate caution I add that the
anonymous exegete did not interpret the encounter of Sun and Moon as the

31 In fact the question hardly arises except in translation, where one must choose to render the
single Latin word taurum with or without an article; if with, then definite or indefinite; capitalized
or not; or finally and unambiguously, untranslated as Taurus.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 225

message of the tauroctony. Rather, he explicated the star-talk meanings which
'Mithras' and 'the bull' necessarily have as language signs in the medium carrying
the message. One can appreciate the scholiast's puzzlement, for like modern
scholars he looks for message where there is medium, and finding nothing much
to his satisfaction — can this really just be about eclipses? — he not unreasonably
supposes some grander philosophical mystery of which the author has 'laid bare a
part' with 'images and metaphors' (figuris). 52

If the Sun and the Moon encounter each other on the cusp of their houses, or
anywhere else on the ecliptic for that matter, what happens? Usually nothing, or
more precisely nothing observable. The Moon, at the same longitude as the Sun
but somewhat to the north or south, is invisible. So one may say that the Moon is
overcome by the Sun whose invincibility is thereby confirmed. This solar victory
is routine: it occurs once a (synodic) month and marks the month's beginning
('new moon'). But every so often the Sun and the Moon arrive together not only
at the same degree of longitude but at the same degree of latitude (by definition
latitude 0° since the Sun never departs from the ecliptic). Since the Moon is the
nearer of the two bodies, she passes in front of the Sun and so causes a solar
eclipse. Thus at the very moment of his customary triumph the Sun is cata-
strophically defeated. Certainly this defeat is quite rare and seen by few, for
unlike lunar eclipses which are seen from any point on earth where the eclipsed
Moon is above the horizon, total solar eclipses are seen only along a fairly narrow
'shadow path. Nevertheless their occurrence is a universally known fact which no
assertion of the Sun's invincibility, however vociferous, can gainsay. A serious
solar cult — 'serious' in the sense of cognizant of the science of its culture — simply
has to take eclipses seriously. It is no more possible for such a cult to ignore solar
eclipses than it would be for a religion to assert the benevolence and omnipotence
of God and ignore the problem of evil. Bad stuff happens, to modify a saying,
and it happens now and again to the Sun.

Fortunately, we now have on record a monument which shows that some
Mithraists at least took the problem of eclipses very seriously indeed. The zodiac
on the ceiling of the Ponza Mithraeum, published by M. J. Vermaseren (1974),
shows within the circle of signs a huge semicircular snake with its head in Leo and
its tail in Aquarius. 33 In my detailed study of the Ponza zodiac (Beck 1976*2,
1978 = 2004c: chs. 9 and 10) I argued that the snake is an early representation
(actually the first in the West) of a cosmic dragon which causes eclipses and which
eventually gave its name, in the form caput and Cauda draconis (the 'head and tail
of the dragon'), to the lunar nodes Anabibazon and Katabibazon. During my
researches I was alerted to two outside facts: first that the shadow path of a solar
eclipse passed across or very close to the island of Ponza on 14 August 212 ce;

32 Figura can mean 'a form of speech departing from the straightforward and obvious' {OLD,
sense 11). What I see as a means of expressing something the scholiast sees as a means of disguising it.
Interestingly, with this sense of figura we both see it as a strategy of language.

33 Also, closer to the centre, a large bear and a small bear, obviously Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

226 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

secondly that the fact that the eclipse took place in Leo, 34 the Sun's own house,
was noted by those who witnessed or heard about it in North Africa. Tertullian
reports {Ad Scapulam 3.3) that it was not thought possible that 'positioned in its
own exaltation and house' {positus in suo hypsomate et domicilio) 35 the Sun could
suffer 'the extinction of its light' as the consequence of 'an ordinary eclipse' (ex
ordinario deliquio). The zodiac of the Ponza Mithraeum, read in its historical
context, shows that from an initiate's perspective a solar eclipse in Leo was
memorable, so memorable that it merited a unique type of monument to record
it. How the local Mithraists interpreted this solar defeat we have no idea. All we
can say is that they did not evade what star-talk told them was inevitable in the
course of time but dealt with it explicitly 36

Actually, there is something we can say about the Mithraic strategy for coping
with a solar eclipse in Leo. If an eclipse in Leo is the worst defeat the Sun can
suffer, what are the circumstances in which this outcome is impossible? The
answer is simple: since eclipses by definition occur at the lunar nodes, an eclipse
of the Sun in Leo can only occur when one or other of the nodes is in Leo.
Remove the nodes from Leo and its opposite sign, Aquarius, and an eclipse in
Leo becomes an impossibility. If you wish to locate the nodes as far as you can
from Leo and Aquarius, the pair of opposed signs to pick is the pair in
quadrature, Taurus and Scorpius. But we have already established (sect. 9,
above) that the Mithraic torchbearers mean inter alia the lunar nodes in this
pair of signs, Anabibazon in Taurus and Katabibazon in Scorpius. Do we
conclude that they were assigned these meanings for the very purpose of repre-
senting an ideal lunar month in which Leo, the Sun's house, is necessarily eclipse-
free? No, we do not so conclude, for that would be to confuse result with intent.
Certainly, a star-talk entailment of the tauroctony's design is 'no solar eclipse in
Leo this month'. 37 That is irrefutable, for that is what the tauroctony actually
says, and in star-talk, as in other languages, words in syntactically proper
arrangements must be presumed to mean what they say. However, it is a very
different matter to claim designer's intent or even designer's awareness. For
awareness one can easily make a case. Intent is more problematic, for it means
disentangling the designer's priorities in structuring the tauroctony along the

34 At the ascending node: consequently in the Ponza zodiac it is the snake's head which is
juxtaposed with the sign of Leo.

35 Stfictly speaking, Tettullian is right about the domicile, wrong about the exaltation. The Sun's
exaltation is Aries.

36 Although Mithras is apparently undefeated in the biographical episodes represented in the
side-scenes, his career, as Giulia Sfameni Gasparro has pointed out (1979^: 324, 345), is not
without Vicissitudes': 'tuttavia e protagonista di una vicenda complessa che conosce rischio, fatica,
contrasti.' For Sol Mithras surely the most terrible of vicissitudes is to undergo eclipse in his own
house.

37 Or for at least three years before or after, approximately the length of time it takes the nodes to
regress across two intervening signs (e.g. for the descending node to regress from the start of
Scorpius to the end of Leo while the ascending node regresses from the start of Taurus to the end
of Aquarius).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 227

lines of the esoteric quartering, and that presents the same difficulties as finding
the 'real motives' behind any complicated human enterprise.

11. THE ORIGINS OF THE ESOTERIC QUARTERING AND
THE DEFINITION OF AN IDEAL MONTH

There is actually good monumental evidence that the esoteric quartering and the
ideal lunar month which it defines descended to the Mithraic mysteries from an
earlier form of Mithras-worship. That earlier form was the Mithras-worship of
the Graeco-Iranian kingdom of Commagene in the first century bce. I have
argued elsewhere that the antecedents of the mysteries lie there and that one of
the agents of transmission in the following century was the astrologer-politician
Ti. Claudius Balbillus (Beck 1998^; 2001: 62-71; 2004c: 323-9), a kinsman by
marriage of the ruling dynast of Commagene.

It is worth noticing how our exegesis has moved from the entirely synchronic
to the partially diachronic. We are talking now of origins and events — in a word,
of history. This shift to diachronic history is inevitable when treating of an
enterprise committed to relating earth to heaven in star-talk discourse. For we
are in the unusual position of dealing with two stories simultaneously, one of
which is recoverable in its entirety. I mean of course the celestial story, in the very
literal sense that we can reconstruct the positions of the celestial bodies relative to
each other as viewed from any location on earth at any time on any date. 38 We
can reconstruct what the ancients saw (weather permitting), what they could not
have seen (celestial events not observable at the relevant longitudes and latitudes
because they occurred either in daylight or below the horizon), and, much more
importantly, what any minimally competent astronomer or astrologer would
have known from tables and calculations regardless of visibility. Not all of the
events in this celestial history would have been germane to the mysteries, and we
cannot tell a priori which were and which were not: 'may have been' is reasonable
methodologically, 'must have been' is not. But when we have evidence clearly
relating the celestial story to the terrestrial story of the Mithraic Mysteries — the
Ponza zodiac is obviously the best example — we can bring an unusual degree of
clarity to the actual history of the Mysteries here on earth.

The next piece of evidence we have to consider is the great Lion monument of
Nemrud Dagh (V31) together with the statues of the enthroned gods and the
reliefs of the gods in 'right-handshake' {dexiosis) with King Antiochus I of
Commagene. 39 The Lion monument is generally and rightly considered to be

38 There are inexpensive astronomical software programs which can display precisely these views
on a computer screen. For example, I generated Figs. 9, 10, and 15 from the 'Voyager II Dynamic
Sky Simulator' program.

39 I have discussed the Lion monument and its intent in Beck 1999 (= 2004f: ch. 14): 12-14;
2001 [2003]: 62-4.

228 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

a horoscope of sorts. In form it is a bas-relief on which a huge lion, moving to the
right with his vast maned head confronting the viewer, fills most of the field. His
body and the surrounds are covered with stars, one of which on his chest is
cradled in a crescent moon. The three large stars above his back are labelled from
left to right Pyroeis Herakleous, Stilbon Apollonos, and Phaethon Dios ('the fiery
[star] of Heracles, the glittering [star] of Apollo, the radiant [star] of Zeus'),
which identifies them respectively as the planets Mars, Mercury, and Jupiter. 40
The monument's explicit star-talk about the planets makes it certain that the star-
studded Lion is the constellation of Leo, and the moon-cradled star on his chest
Regulus, the lucida of Leo.

Before I start my exegesis of the Lion monument, I want to make it clear that
I am not unveiling the origin of an esoteric doctrine later adopted by the founders
of Mithraism and passed down more of less unchanged from generation to
generation among the 'wise and learned' in the mysteries. What I shall be
explicating is an early representation in a certain star-talk tradition which issued
in the Mithraic mysteries — and elsewhere. 41 What holds these representations to
the same template is not transmitted doctrine, but the logic of star-talk, an
exoteric system independent of the mysteries and so resistant to the imposition of
aberrant meanings. No inventive Mithraic Father could propose, for example, a
house for the Sun other than Leo, and only the most ignorant would fail to draw
the inference: Sun in Leo means Sun at home.

Now to our Lion. It is generally agreed, again rightly, that he commemorates
an astronomical event: the simultaneous presence of the Moon and the three
named planets in Leo. On the assumption that their absence from the monument
means that the other three planets (Sun, Saturn, Venus) were not then in Leo, a
definitive date can be found within the relevant time span when those presences
and those absences actually obtained. And so it was: 7 July 62 bce. The solution
was proposed by O. Neugebauer and H. B. Van Hoesen in their magisterial Greek
Horoscopes (1959: 14-16). The date was definitively explicated by Heinrich
Dorrie (1964: 201-7) as the foundation horoscope of the great mountain-top
hierothesion and of the establishment of the royal cult there. The gods in dexiosis
with the king are the identified planetary powers greeting him in the person of the
star Regulus, Cor Leonis, 'the royal star on the heart of the Lion' (Pliny, NH
18.235,271).

So far, so good. What follows, however, is a cautionary tale on the limits of
positivism in the history of astronomy and astrology. The problem is the
supposed absence of the Sun. Now 'as everyone knows', if Mercury is present
the Sun is also present — if not in the same sign, then in one or other of the signs
next door. 42 Far from saying 'Sun absent', what our Lion actually says, as a glance

40 On alternative planetary names see Cumont 1935.

41 'Elsewheres' I hope to pursue in another study.

42 In angular distance Mercury is never more than 28°, i.e. less than one 30° sign, away from
the Sun.

Fig. 15- Planetary positions at new moon (conjunction) on 5 July 62 bce, 2:40 p.m. (Commagene LMT). The positions of the Moon
one day earlier and two days later are also shown.

230 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

at Figure 15 will show, is 'Sun soon present' or on Dome's interpretation 'the Sun
will be the next to greet our king'.

The Lion monument was never meant to be read as a self-contained document
whose intent was to state an exclusive horoscopal date: 7 July 62 bce and no
other day. Rather, it is a sophisticated and polysemous star-talk text whose full
range of meanings only emerge when read together with the dexiosis reliefs, the
colossal statues, and the foundation inscription (V32). 43 The inscription is the
obvious starting point, for it spells out precisely who are the gods represented
enthroned and in dexiosis with the king. They are ('as you see') 'Zeus Oro-
masdes', 'Apollo Mithras Helios Hermes', 'Artagnes Heracles Ares', and 'my
fatherland all-nurturing Kommagene' (lines 54-7). In terms of celestial sign-
ification,

(1) 'Zeus Oromasdes' and 'Phaethon Dios' mean the planet Jupiter;

(2) Artagnes Heracles Ares' and 'Pyroeis Herakleous' mean the planet Mars;

(3) Apollo Mithras [Helios] Hermes' and 'Stilbon Apollonos' mean the
planet Mercury;

(4) Apollo Mithras Helios [Hermes]' and the Lion mean the Sun;

(5) 'my motherland all-nurturing Kommagene' and the lunar crescent mean
the Moon.

The last of these five meanings is established by process of elimination: if three of
the four gods represented enthroned and in dexiosis intend the three named
planets on the Lion monument, what planet does the personification of Com-
magene intend and what is her sign on the Lion monument? Obviously, the
Moon and the lunar crescent.

The foundation text and the dexiosis reliefs make it abundantly clear that five,
not four, planetary gods were involved in the astral foundation event, despite the
fact that only four anthropomorphic gods are named and represented both
enthroned and greeting the king. This is so because one of the anthropomorphic
gods is, and is a sign for, two planets. Apollo Mithras Helios Hermes' is, and is a
sign for, both the Sun and the planet Mercury. Consider the number of elements
in his name, four. Like his two male colleagues he has an Iranian name and an
Iranian persona, Mithras (corresponding to Oromasdes and Artagnes) . Like them
he carries the customary Greek planetary name and with it the planetary persona,
Hermes = Mercury (corresponding to Zeus = Jupiter and Ares = Mars). Like
Artagnes he carries an alternative planetary name, Apollo = planet Mercury
(corresponding to Heracles = planet Mars). 44 But the fourth name and persona

43 For bibliographic references to the monuments and inscription see Beck 1999: 32, n. 12.

44 On the alternative system of divine names see Cumont 1935: 13—16. The planet Jupiter is
'Zeus' in both systems. 'Apollo' in the Commagenian context is actually ambiguous, since 'Apollo
Epekoos' is the name of an entirely Hellenic Sun god with halo and rays on a dexiosis relief which
pre-dates the foundation on Nemrud Dagh (the Sofraz Koy stele, Wagner 1975: 54—9; see also Beck
1998a: 124, n.49).

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 23 1

of this deity has no counterpart among the titles of his colleagues. Yet the name
refers to another planet, in fact to the greatest of the planets, Helios = the Sun. So
do we pretend that 'Helios' does not mean 'the Sun' because the Sun was not in Leo
on 7 July 62 bce? That would be truly a counsel of despair, especially when we
recall the impressive solar halo surrounding the deity's head in the dexiosis relief.
Do we then assert that although this deity means two planets, Mercury and the
Sun, the solar identity is suppressed in the Lion monument because the Sun on
7 July 62 bce, though close, was not yet 'in Leo'? The supposition is just as absurd,
for it implies that, before or after the event, the king and his advisers selected as an
auspicious day for the foundation a date on which Mithras was present as
Mercury, but not as the Sun! It was as if they welcomed the messenger of the
Sun king but slammed the door in the Sun king's face!

The only solution is to follow the star-talk logic of the monumental complex
as a whole and to 'read' the Sun into the Lion monument. And as soon as we
admit the necessity, we 'see' the Sun there. The Sun is the Lion. Or rather, in star-
talk terms, we may say that

the Lion means not only Leo but also the Sun;

or, if you are still uncomfortable with polysemy,

the Lion means Leo occupied and glorified by the presence of the Sun his
master.

In context could that superb radiate mane really signify anything else?

The Lion monument, then, tells of the encounter of five, not four, planets in
Leo. Here are the dates of the successive conjunctions with Regulus, the royal star
who, following Dorrie, 45 we understand as the king's celestial surrogate.

Mars

25 June

Mercury

ljuly

Moon

6 July

Sun

28 July

(Moon

3 August)

(Venus

6 August)

Jupiter

6 August

Notice that between the Regulus conjunctions of Mars and Jupiter there occurred
not only the Moon's conjunction of 6 July and the Sun's conjunction but also a
second conjunction of the Moon (in the next lunation) and a conjunction of
Venus. The latter was suppressed on the Nemrud Dagh monuments but arguably
commemorated elsewhere. Texts from Arsameia on the Nymphaios and Arsameia

45 I have corrected Dome's dates (1964: 205) where necessary and have added those for the
conjunctions of the Sun and Venus with Regulus and for the Moon's second conjunction; see Beck
1999: 14.

232 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

on the Euphrates substitute Hera Teleia for Commagene, 46 and Hera was the
name for the planet Venus in the alternative nomenclature that called the planet
Mercury Apollo and the planet Mars Heracles.

One must not give too free a rein to the imagination and envisage these
celestial events as observations made by actual astrologers from the summit of
Nemrud Dagh. In the first place, the Sun is far too close for any of the
conjunctions except the first, that of Mars, to be observable with any certainty,
even if the weather permitted. Secondly, the prosaic fact is that at least in the
Greek tradition celestial events of this sort, even when observable in principle,
were calculated, not literally watched for. It was enough that the events were real
and knowable, and that they could be imagined 'in the mind's eye' and endowed
with whatever significance the astrologer chose within the constraints of exeget-
ical and interpretive star-talk.

The Lion monument, in the context of Antiochus' hierothesion on the summit
of Nemrud Dagh, announces an assembly of planetary gods, the Sun included, in
Leo. As a document in the history of astrology it is relatively early. In fact it is the
earliest of all the horoscopes in Neugebauer and Van Hoesen's collection. One
consequence of this, as Neugebauer and Van Hoesen were of course aware (1959:
15), is that we cannot assume that the system of signs measured from the vernal
equinox at Aries 0° was yet definitively in place. 'In the Lion' could refer to
somewhat different tracts of the ecliptic, including the tract occupied by Leo the
constellation and its immediate surrounds. In our Figure 15 the curved vertical
line on the right represents longitude 90° and the curved vertical line on the left
longitude 120°, respectively the beginnings of the signs Cancer and Leo in the
classic astronomical system (vernal equinox at Aries 0°). Various other systems
would move those two lines to the right. 47 In the same way, if we define 'Leo' as
constellation rather than sign, his western boundary must move a good half sign
to the right, since his head as shown is entirely in Cancer the sign!

I do not think that a definite answer can or should be returned to the question,
on which system did Commagenian astrologers of the first century bce measure
celestial longitude? Neugebauer and Van Hoesen chose the system of the much
earlier Greek astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus (fourth century bce), which in our
figure would move the longitudinal lines a full 15° (half a sign) to the right. This
meets the desiderata of having the three named planets and the Moon 'in Leo' on
7 July (two days after the date of our Figure 15). 48 It also has the happy result of

46 Waldmann 1973: 89 (Text A, line 251) and 130 (Text G, line 183). While the introduction of
Hera as the planet Venus is accurate star-talk (the planet really was present then), I am not suggesting
that this was necessarily in the drafters' minds when they added her to the text at those two sites.

47 Including the two Babylonian systems, 'A' and 'B', which set the vernal equinox at Aries 10°
and 8° respectively. System B remained in vogue in Greek astrology long after the standard system
(equinox at Aries 0°) had prevailed in astronomy.

48 For a chart of the situation on 7 July see Beck 1999: 25, fig. 4. Note there how the fast-moving
Moon is now to the east of Mars and Mercury by the Lion's left hind leg.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 233

returning to 'Leo' all the stars of his head and forelegs, which for me is a much
more important consideration.

There is a second reason for keeping in mind the Lion monument's early date
as a document in the history of astrology Previously I spoke of Leo as the Sun's
house without chronological qualification. But what can be taken for granted in
the star-talk of a monument of the second century ce or later, such as the
Housesteads birth scene (V860, discussed above, sect. 9), cannot be assumed
for a monument a good two centuries older. Did the Commagenian astrologers
even know of the system of houses? Was it even current then? There is no Greek
or Latin source to confirm its existence at that early date, and unlike the system of
planetary exaltations and humiliations there is no evidence for it in Babylonian
astronomy 49 Fortunately, my argument here does not depend on the knowledge
or availability of the full system of planetary houses at this early date, only on the
awareness of a special relationship between the Sun and Leo. Indeed, I would like
to reverse the argument: far from being evidence for the existence of the system of
houses at that date, I suggest that the celestial events of 62 bce and their
interpretation in Commagene mark a significant stage in the development of
the system of houses within the tradition of star-talk in those astrological circles.

A glance at Figure 1 5 will reveal why I have chosen 5 July 62 bce as the particular
date to illustrate what was then happening in the heavens. The horoscopal con-
figuration of 7 July, though real enough (the heavens do not lie, neither do historians
of astronomy), is an irrelevance, for it corresponds, pace Neugebauer and Van
Hoesen, to no horoscope actually cast by men on earth. In other words, there was
nothing in the terrestrial history to match what certainly occurred in the celestial.
What could perhaps be said in favour of 7 July is that on that evening it might have
been possible, weather permitting, actually to view the brighter elements of the
configuration on the western horizon after sunset but before Leo itself had set. 50
I might also have chosen the moment of the Moon's conjunction with Regulus on 6
July, since that is what the Lion monument actually 'says' by showing Regulus
cradled in the crescent. Instead, I have chosen the moment of another conjunction
of the Moon, her conjunction with the Sun on 5 July.

All this may seem like a monstrous digression. But remember the reason why
the celestial and terrestrial stories of 62 bce, a century-and-a-half before the
appearance of the Mysteries of Mithras in the Roman empire, were of concern to
us. Our topic was the worst thing that could happen to a Sun god — a Sun god,
that is, constructed by the star- talk of Graeco-Roman antiquity. The 'worst thing'

49 The earliest horoscope in Neugebauer and Van Hoesen's collection which refers to the system
of houses has a natal date of 81 CE but was almost certainly cast later in the native's life (1959: 21—8).
Of the theoretical astrologers the earliest to describe and use the system was Dorotheus of Sidon
(1.1.8, 2.28—33), who wrote in the period f.25-75 ce (Pingree 1976: p. x). For exaltations in
Babylonian astronomy see Rochberg-Halton 1988.

50 See the sky-chart in Beck 1999: 25, fig. 4, which includes the local horizon and the positions
of the stars and planets relative to it at 8:00 p.m. local mean time.

234 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

was a solar eclipse in Leo, the seat of his power, an event which when it actually
happened — more importantly, was seen to have happened — on 14 August 212
was commemorated by the Mithraists on the island of Ponza.

In our contingent world this 'worst thing' is inevitable: the structures and
motions of the cosmos make it so. But star-talk furnishes two consolations. First,
formidable though it seems, it is just an appearance: the god's light is hidden, not
extinguished; secondly, there are long periods of time when it cannot happen, times
when the lunar nodes are not in Leo and Aquarius and you know for certain that the
invisible Moon will pass well to the north or south of the Sun. Such an occasion was
the 'new moon' of 5 July 62 bce. As you can see, the Moon passed to the north of
the Sun; at latitude 4° 40' she was almost at her northern extreme, the point she in
fact reached on the following day at the Lion's muzzle in Figure 15.

Now the fact that the Lion monument speaks about a conjunction of Sun and
Moon when the Moon was close to her northern limit does not imply that it was
part of the designer's intention to celebrate or memorialize that 'no-eclipse'
situation. The logic of star-talk compels a star-talk monument to mean what it
says, but one cannot therefore impute everything it says to the conscious intent of
those who commissioned or designed it. In this instance, however, there is some
powerful external evidence to suggest that memorializing avoidance of the 'worst
thing' and defining an ideal month which would have that effect was indeed a
matter of actual intent, not just an unconsidered star-talk entailment.

Two pieces of evidence belong to the celestial history of star-talk; they are
actual celestial events, things said by the stars themselves. A third piece of
evidence belongs to the terrestrial history of star-talk, a report of certain views
concerning lunar eclipses attributed to the followers of the Stoic philosopher and
polymath Posidonius of Apamea, active in the first half of the first century bce.
To address these pieces of evidence we must start with the correlative of 'no
eclipse in Leo'. If no eclipse can occur in Leo because that is where the northern
extreme of the lunar orbit currently resides, it follows that eclipses can occur in
Taurus and Scorpius because that is where the lunar nodes currently reside. This
is not to say that eclipses will occur in Taurus and Scorpius, merely that one of
several necessary conditions for their occurrence there is met.

An eclipse may of course be solar or lunar. So far we have concentrated on solar
eclipses, necessarily construed in a solar religion as a setback, albeit temporary and
apparent rather than real, for the Sun god. Lunar eclipses, in which the Sun projects
the earth's shadow on to the Moon's disk and so deprives her of her borrowed light
when at the full, are solar victories and lunar defeats. The Sun thus achieves at 'full
moon' what he routinely achieves at 'new moon'. Though infrequent in absolute
terms (a very small proportion of full moons are eclipsed), lunar eclipses occur more
often than solar eclipses and are witnessed by more people. 51

51 As noted above, a total solar eclipse is witnessed only by those in the shadow path, while a
lunar eclipse is witnessed from anywhere on the earth's surface where the eclipsed Moon is above the
horizon.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

235

Although, as we have seen, the primary star-talk meaning of Mithras killing
the bull is the monthly conjunction of Sun and Moon when the light of the
former overwhelms the latter, lunar eclipses qua solar victories are also intended.
In this utterance of the tauroctony, the torchbearers will mean the nodes, the
points at which the lunar and solar orbits intersect. For an eclipse to occur the
Sun and the Moon must arrive at the nodes simultaneously, at the same node for
a solar eclipse and one at each node for a lunar eclipse. But, as we saw above
(sect. 9), the torchbearer Cautes means specifically 'Anabibazon in Taurus' and
his colleague Cautopates means 'Katabibazon in Scorpius'. It follows then that
when speaking of lunar eclipses what the tauroctony specifically says is 'lunar
eclipse at the ascending node in Taurus' and/or 'lunar eclipse at the descending
node in Scorpius'. These are solar victories and desirable, just as the antitype, the
solar eclipse in Leo, is the 'worst thing' and highly undesirable.

I am now going to suggest that a tradition concerning lunar eclipses in Taurus
and Scorpius descended to the Mithraic mysteries from Commagenian star-talk
of the first century bce, and that this tradition originated in exegesis and
interpretation of the celestial events of 62 bce and the preceding year. This is
the point at which to introduce the two pieces of evidence from the celestial story,
the actual celestial events. Because of the way in which I have been telling the
celestial and terrestrial star-talk stories it will now come as no surprise that these
two celestial events of 63 bce were total lunar eclipses, both visible from
Commagene (weather permitting), the first on 3 May at the descending node
in Scorpius, the second on 27 October at the ascending node in Taurus. The
particulars are given in the table.

Date

3 May 63 bce

27 October 63 bce

Lunation no. 52

-24263

-24257

Saros cycle

Node

descending

ascending

Time of mid eclipse 53

3:30 a.m.

6:00 p.m.

Altitude of Moon above

horizon

16° SW

9° E

Longitude of Moon

218° 30'

32° 15'

Constellation

Scorpius

Taurus

Viewed from Commagene, the second eclipse would have been particularly
striking. The Moon was already totally eclipsed when she rose. Normally the
full Moon can be seen rising opposite the setting Sun. On this day she would
have been invisible until advancing twilight disclosed a view of her deep within
the umbra. In longitude she was about 1 ° west of the Pleiades, one of the most
conspicuous celestial markers. Nightfall would quickly reveal two of the planets
ahead of her to the west, Saturn 5° degrees away and Mars 11°.

" Meuss andMucke 1979: 105.

53 Local mean time, Commagene.

236 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

That there is no extant record of the observation of these eclipses need not
trouble us unduly. The first centuries bce and ce are the silent years in the
records of ancient astronomical observation. In the run of ninety-four observa-
tions in the Almagest there is a gap between 127 bce and 92 ce (nos. 50 and 51
in Pedersen 1974: 415). More important is our third piece of evidence which
implies that human star-talk, at least in one tradition, did indeed take cognizance
of the eclipses of 63 bce.

A curious and vexed passage in Diogenes Laertius' Lives of the Philosophers
(7.146, p. 531.5-7 ed. Marcovich), in discussing Stoic astronomy and eclipse
theory in particular, attributes to 'those around Posidonius' the opinion that the
Moon reaches the latitude of the ecliptic (i.e. crosses it) 'in the Claws [i.e. Libra]
and the Scorpion and the Ram and the Bull', that is, at the Libra-Scorpius and
Aries-Taurus cusps or, as we would put it, at Scorpius 0° and Taurus 0°. The
attribution to the circle of Posidonius yields a date in the first half of the first
century bce.

The passage has troubled historians of astronomy (Neugebauer 1975: 671),
for it seems to imply that the Posidonians denied what was by that time widely
known, that the lunar nodes are not fixed at any one pair of points but travel
around the ecliptic in a period of some eighteen and two-thirds years, as we have
seen. However, regardless of the Posidonians' intended meaning and whether or
not their views have been correctly reported, it seems to me more than likely that
the empirical and observational basis for this piece of star-talk were the actual
lunar eclipses of 63 bce when the nodes were in fact in Taurus and Scorpius.

The configurations and conjunctions of July and August 62 bce were con-
strued, I suggest, by the star- talk experts of Commagene as the culmination of the
celestial events of the preceding year. From these events they constructed a
narrative of solar triumph and lunar subordination. The story told of an ideal
month in which the Sun would be invulnerable and the Moon's subordination
regularly and dramatically demonstrated. The ideal month was quartered in such
a way as to set both the point of conjunction which initiates the lunation and the
northern limit of the Moon's orbit at the start of Leo, the descending node at the
start of Scorpius, the southern limit of the lunar orbit at the start of Aquarius, and
the ascending node at the start of Taurus — all as in Figure 14. 54 An approxima-
tion to this ideal occurred in July 62 bce. Or rather, the lunation beginning on 5
July 62 bce furnished the parameters for formulating an ideal month, as did the
lunations of the preceding year in which the Moon had suffered total eclipses. But
the ideal lunar month was precisely that — a fiction. No actual month exhibited
precisely those features, and even if one had, the next most certainly would not.
The point of conjunction would have moved a full sign or so to the east and the

54 There is a nice paradox in this ideal month. The Moon passes to the north of the Sun at
conjunction. In 'altitude' she is thus 'above' the Sun.

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 237

nodes and northern and southern limits a small but significant distance to the
west. 55 Not for nothing did the Moon get her reputation for variability.

Here then is the origin of our esoteric quartering, not an invention of the
Mithraic Mysteries but an inheritance from a prior form of Mithras-worship in
Anatolia on the cultural marches of Greece and Iran. This highly artificial royal
cult — a 'top-down' religion if there ever was one — created composite Greek and
Iranian deities by star-talk logic, and it used that logic to assert that Mithras is the
Sun and the Sun is Mithras. The sign of one is the sign of the other.

From the royal cult of Commagene both Mithras-worship and star-talk as the
proper idiom of Mithras-worship were transmitted to the Roman Mysteries. By
now we know enough to resist the fantasy of an esoteric doctrine passed down from
adept to adept. What flows down the generations are discrete representations,
mental representations transmitted by way of public representations; and as Dan
Sperber has taught us (1996: 31), output never precisely matches input: 'The most
obvious lesson of recent cognitive work is that recall is not storage in reverse, and
comprehension is not expression in reverse. Memory and communication trans-
form information.' What disciplined the descent of representations in Mithras-
worship from mid-first-century bce Commagene to late first-century ce Rome (or
wherever in the empire you choose to locate the emergence of the Mysteries) was the
logic of star-talk — which is to say, the systems of Hellenistic astronomy and
astrology. By listening closely to their star-talk utterances we can tell that the
Mithraic tauroctony is a true descendant of the Lion of Nemrud Dagh.

'Listening closely' means paying attention to representations in cognate
streams of star-talk. The flow of representations which leads from Commagene
to Rome is by no means self-contained. Indeed its representations are compre-
hensible only in relation to other streams of star-talk which flow into and out of
it. For example, the representation of an ideal month, as we have seen, shows up
in the circle of Posidonius, but that is no reason for assimilating the Posidonians
to the Commagenians.

The broader star-talk tradition we see at work in Commagene, in the circle of
Posidonius, and later in the Mysteries of Mithras is peculiarly opaque to the
modern investigator. That is because it cannot be readily placed in either of the
two categories into which historians of science and culture have corralled ancient
star-talk. It is manifestly neither 'astronomy', defined as scientific inquiry, nor
'astrology', at least in the predominant form of astral prediction or horoscopy. So
a fresh point of view and new methods are necessary to address it.

The testimony of Diogenes Laertius on the Posidonians' placement of the
lunar nodes is a case in point. The great historian of ancient astronomy Otto
Neugebauer (1975: 671) was puzzled by the Posidonians' apparent ignorance of
the regression of the nodes and was at pains to offer an explanation to exculpate

55 At the same time the Moon's points of apogee and perigee, about which the ideal month is
silent, would have shifted somewhat to the east.

238 Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III

them. My alternative explanation, that the testimony has to do with the creation
of an ideal month, would simply not have occurred to him. Positivist historians
of astronomy — and Neugebauer was a most aggressive positivist — do not will-
ingly treat of constructs such as an ideal month, especially when, as here, the
construct would mark a retreat from knowledge already gained. Why would
anyone who already knew about the regression of the lunar nodes want to tie
them back in place again?

To an inquirer dealing primarily with the culture and religion of ancient star-
talkers, the question is not rhetorical and the answer is quite straightforward. In a
religious context — and what pre-modern context was not profoundly reli-
gious? — people concern themselves not only with what is but also with what
should be. So they construct ideal models, in Clifford Geertz's famous formula-
tion (1973: 93-5), not models of but models^r. To the Commagenians, as later
to the Mithraists, it mattered not merely how the Moon does in fact behave but
how the Moon ought to behave in an ideal cosmos. Hence the representation of
the ideal month with its distinctive quartering and the echo of that representation
in the star-talk of the Posidonians.

That an idealist in the Greek intellectual tradition might have constructed
such a lunar model is entirely plausible, given the premier postulate of Greek
astronomy, that principles of uniformity must underlie the apparent irregularities
of observed celestial phenomena. To postulate a radically simplified model of
what ought to be, but in the present dispensation is not, would be just an
extension of that idealizing tendency in Greek astronomy.

Idealizing cosmological speculation of this sort would fit well into the other
intellectual tradition current at that time in that part of the ancient world, the
Iranian, a religious culture that we know, from explicit sources, contributed one-
half to the syncretistic Commagenian pantheon. In an important article Philip
Kreyenbroek (1994) drew attention to the tension in cosmogonic thinking
between what was to become the main stream of Zoroastrianism and other
ancient Iranian — indeed, Indo-Iranian — traditions. In both, creation was a
two-stage process, the second stage being the endowment of a static cosmos
with motion, growth, and change. In both, the second stage is good and
necessary. However, in the Zoroastrian tradition it is necessitated by the evil
Ahriman's destruction of the first, more perfect creation, while in the alternative
tradition it is an unqualified amelioration in that it vivifies a mere inert potential.
Kreyenbroek suggests that Roman Mithraism may have descended from a
western Iranian branch of that alternative tradition which worshipped Mithra
as the cosmic vivifier in the second stage of creation, an important part of which
was the setting in motion of the luminaries and hence the alternation of day and
night, light and darkness.

Regardless of the question of Mithra's agency, Kreyenbroek's study shows
that the comparison of the actual cosmos with an ideal archetype (is the former
the fulfilment of the latter or a temporary expedient, and will the present

Mithraic Mysteries as Symbol System: III 239

dispensation return to a purer, less complex form?) could well have engaged
thoughtful Iranian Anatolians in the late Hellenistic age. Fixing the lunar nodes
at Taurus 0° and Scorpius 0°, contrary to the then known facts, does not
necessarily indicate astronomical ignorance. From the ancient Iranian perspective
as from the Greek, it is equally explicable as part of a model of lunar motion in an
ideal cosmology.

Of course to show that something would have fitted well' into such-and-such
a context only raises the something's probability; it cannot establish the some-
thing's existence. I have argued here for the existence and Commagenian origin
of a lunar quartering which furnished the structural archetype and much of the
star- talk meaning of the tauroctony, on the basis of (1) the actual celestial events
of 63 and 62 bce, (2) the monumental complex of King Antiochus on Nemrud
Dagh 'thickly' described, and (3) the curious testimony of Diogenes Laertius on
the placement of the lunar nodes at the beginnings of Taurus and Scorpius 'by
those around Posidonius'. My hypothesis makes sense of Diogenes' testimony
and so solves a minor problem of star-talk history. My hypothesis also offers a
solution to another couple of minor historical problems, the origins of (1) the
practice in Greek astronomy of measuring the Moon's 'argument of latitude'
from the northern limit rather than one or other of the nodes (Neugebauer 1975:
80), and (2) the astrological calculation of the Moon's 'steps' (ascending and
descending) and 'winds' (north and south) from the same point arbitrarily fixed
at Leo 0° (above, sect. 9). There is further evidence to indicate the existence of a
geometrical and kinematic model of lunar motion which correlates with, and so
confirms, the postulated ideal month. That evidence I shall address in the
following chapter. It is indispensable, but less astronomically oriented readers
have probably been subjected to as much star-talk data as they can reasonably be
expected to bear, and may prefer to proceed directly to the Conclusions. 56

56 However, let me close this chapter with mention of a tiny scrap of an astronomical papyrus of
uncertain date from Roman Egypt, P. Oxy.A\A\ (Jones 1999: 1. 101, 11.25), which appears to confirm
at least the existence there of our lunar quartering, though for what ends it is impossible to tell. In this
papyrus, mention is made of the first degree of each of three signs which can be safely restored as
Taurus, Leo, and Scorpius in that order, and presumably of the first degree of Aquarius either before
or after the other three signs. The verb bainei ('goes') is repeated each time, and the editor (Alexander
Jones) has supplied the appropriate prefix ana- or kata- to yield 'goes up' in connection with Taurus
1° and 'goes down in connection with Leo 1° and again with Scorpius V . Following each occurrence
of the verb he supplements the line with t[a boreia ('the north') for Taurus 1 ° and Leo 1 ° and t[a notia
('the south') for Scorpius 1 °. The heavily restored text thus yields the same latitudinal trajectory as our
esoteric quartering, but the name of the planet which thus 'ascends' and 'descends' is unfortunately
lost. Since the fragment appears to imply fixed nodes, Jones (ibid. 1. 101) opts for one of the superior
planets, settling on Mars, 'with its ascending node located at approximately Taurus 5° about A. D.
100'. I think it much more likely that the fragment relates in some way to the scheme of the lunar
nodes reported for 'those around Posidonius' by Diogenes Laertius and thus to our 'ideal' or 'esoteric
lunar quartering'. Another possibility is that the scheme as we find it both in the papyrus fragment
and in Diogenes Laertius may have to do not with ideally fixed lunar nodes but with a postulated
position of the lunar nodes at creation, in other words not with where the nodes ideally 'ought to be'
but where they were actually thought to have been when the cosmos was first endowed with motion
(and perhaps to where they will return at the end of time).

Excursus: the esoteric quartering, a lost

helicoidal model of lunar motion, and the

origin of the 'winds' and 'steps' of the Moon.

The identity of 'Antiochus the Athenian'

The apparent fixing of the lunar nodes at Taurus 0° and Scorpius 0° by 'those
around Posidonius' is not the only peculiarity in Diogenes Laertius' summary
of Stoic astronomy in Book 7 of his Lives of the Philosophers. At 7.144
(p. 529.14-17, ed. Marcovich) he reports the view 'that the Sun makes his
route (poreian) through the zodiacal circle oblique (loxen) and similarly the
Moon makes hers helicoidal (helikoeide)' . The obliquity of the ecliptic, the
Sun's route, is of course utterly commonplace, and perhaps 'helicoidal' is in-
tended merely as a synonym for 'oblique'. In that case the view attributed to the
Stoics would be no more than their recognition of the banal fact that the Moon's
orbit is oblique to the ecliptic as the ecliptic is oblique to the celestial equator. But
if so, why introduce the new term at all? And is not 'helicoidal' a strange choice of
synonym for 'oblique'? A helix and an oblique line seem at first glance entirely
different figures.

What else might a 'helicoidal route' mean? Obviously the first thing to do is to
see how other geometrical and astronomical sources use the term 'helix/helicoi-
dal'. Let us look first at Theon of Smyrna (first half of second century ce),
because he does in fact use the term in the sense of an oblique orbit dipping north
and south of the ecliptic. In the second half of ch. 43 of Book 3 of his work on
'mathematical matters useful for reading Plato' (330.1-15, ed. J. Dupuis), he
describes a helix as just such a line undulating to infinity on a plane surface.
Figure 12 in our present study shows the lunar orbit in this form. However, in the
first half of chapter 43 (328.15-28) Theon defines another form of helix to
describe different celestial appearances. This helix is inscribed on a solid surface,
not a plane surface. The surface is a cylinder. You will generate this sort of helix if
you hold your pen against a cylinder which is simultaneously rotating and

The Celestial Helix 24 1

moving one way or the other longitudinally. 1 This figure is nowadays the primary
meaning of the word 'helix', especially since the discovery of the famous 'double
helix' of DNA. In Theon's context it is applied to the product of the two motions
which all seven planets exhibit, universal daily motion to the west and planetary
motion to the east. It is in fact what we see, and it is best envisaged in the case of
the Sun. Each day we can watch the Sun (apparently) circling the earth, but each
day from the winter solstice to the summer solstice the Sun's arc is a little higher
in the sky, a little more to the north; and each day from the summer solstice back
again to the winter solstice the arc is a little lower, a little more to the south. One
of the preconditions for mathematical astronomy is to break apart the planetary
and universal components of this apparent helicoidal motion. 2

This other application of the helix is clearly not what the Stoic sources
reported by Diogenes Laertius had in mind. It may however be germane to
Mithraic representation. In star-talk the snake spiralling round the 'snake-encir-
cled figure' surely means the Sun's apparent helix and the two measures of time
which the helix combines: the day (going once around) and the year (a cycle of
ascending and descending). This complex meaning is very much to the fore in
the Danubian side-scene in which a reclining snake-encircled figure hails Mithras
mounting the solar chariot behind Sol. 3 Travelling round and round in a rising
and falling spiral is the solar 'way to go': it is what the Sun actually does — or
appears to do.

There is, though, yet a third sense in which Theon speaks of planetary helixes,
and it is in this sense, I shall argue, that the Posidonians called the Moon's path
helicoidal. Theon sets out his model in chapters 31, 33, and 41, in the last of
which he attributes it to Eudemus, a pupil of Aristotle and thus more than four
centuries prior to himself. Theon and Eudemus before him were countering the
model of multiple concentric spheres, first advanced by Eudoxus and subse-
quently refined by Callippus and Aristotle. Retrospectively, we know that the
problems intrinsic to the Eudoxan model were eventually solved by Hipparchus
and Ptolemy with the radically different model of epicycles and eccentrics. But
two centuries or so separate Hipparchus from Eudoxus and almost another two
separate Ptolemy from Hipparchus. In the long years between these great figures,
and especially in the astronomically ill-attested years between Hipparchus and
Ptolemy, there was plenty of scope for alternative models and plenty of scope for

1 T. L. Heath (1956: 158—65) has an interesting discussion of the place of the helix in the
taxonomy of lines in Greek geometry. The cylindrical helix is one of only three 'homoeomeric' types
of line. The other two are the straight line and the circle. A homoeomeric line is one in which any
segment is congruent with any other segment.

2 The combination of solar motions is explicitly called a 'helix' in (Pseudo-) Timaeus of Locri,
On the Nature of the Universe and the Soul {29), and in the Ars Eudoxi (27) . Unfortunately the date of
both works is uncertain. The former has a terminus ante at the end of the first century CE and the
latter, in its final form, a terminus ante of 165 bce.

3 The scene is in the lower right corner of the composition. Good examples are V1935, 1958,
1972.

242 The Celestial Helix

them to disappear with few traces into the silence of the historical record. In
Theon's model of helicoidal planetary motion, I suggest, we can trace the outlines
of just such a losing competitor to the epicycle-and-eccentric model of Hippar-
chus and Ptolemy. 4 Why would I want to pursue an astronomical dead end in
this book about the Mithraic mysteries? Fair question. The answer is that the
model is part and parcel of a complex stream of star-talk, a tradition of repre-
sentations, which includes the Mithraic mysteries and the earlier form of
Mithras-worship in Commagene. Comprehending the mysteries means compre-
hending that larger tradition of representations, that larger stream of star-talk.

In this third sense Theon uses the term 'helix/helicoidal' to refer not to actual
planetary paths but to epiphenomena, mere appearances, generated by the actual
rotation, for each planet, of only two dedicated spheres (in addition of course to
rotation of the sphere of the universe which makes everything in the heavens
revolve once every day). The first of each planet's pair of spheres is 'hollow' {koile)
in the sense that it has a skin or shell of a certain thickness. The center of this
sphere is the center of the universe. The sphere rotates eastward in the planet's
sidereal period (e.g. twenty-seven and a third days for the Moon, about twenty-
nine and a half years for Saturn). Between the outer and inner surfaces of this
sphere and carried round by its rotation is a second sphere which is 'solid' {stereo)
and which carries the planet itself on its circumference. 5 This solid sphere too
rotates, and it is these rotations which cause the epiphenomena of figures which
can properly be called 'helicoidal' to be traced in the heavens.

In the three diagrams of Figure 16 let us see how the helix is composed. The
first two diagrams show cross-sections of the two spheres. (1) Figure \6a shows a
vertical cross-section. The two large arcs represent the outer and inner surfaces of
the hollow sphere; the small circle between the two arcs represents the solid
sphere. Our point of view is a spot in the middle of the hollow sphere's shell
equidistant to its inner and outer surfaces. The solid sphere is moving towards us
impelled by the rotation of the hollow sphere. The solid sphere carrying the
planet rotates as shown by the arrows, carrying the planet on its surface from the
northern extreme to perigee, then to the southern extreme, then to apogee, and
back again to the northern extreme. (2) The second diagram, Figure \6b, shows a
horizontal cross-section of the two spheres. It is a view from 'above', in the sense
of from the north. From this perspective the planet on the surface of the solid
sphere would appear to be moving to and from between apogee and perigee.

4 The model appears to have escaped the notice of historians of mathematical astronomy, partly
because it is conveyed in sources who for the most part did not themselves fully understand it; partly
because, at least after Hipparchus, it was manifestly a loser; but mainly, I think, because its traces in
the sources, with one exception, carry no quantitative data of the sort which would attract the
historians' attention.

5 Theon raises the possibility that a single hollow sphere serves for the Sun and the inferior
planets Mercury and Venus. Between the inner and outer surfaces of this common hollow shell nest
the three concentric solid spheres of (from smallest to largest) the Sun, Mercury, and Venus. This is
essentially the model of limited heliocentrism proposed by Heraclides of Pontus.

The Celestial Helix

243

Outer surface of
hollow sphere

HEAVEN ^

Inner surface of
hollow sphere

>. EARTH

Fig. 16a. The 'helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 1 . Vertical cross-section of 'hollow' and
'solid' spheres, showing Moon's motion in platos (latitude) and bathos (depth).

(3) The third diagram, Figure 16c, shows a cross-section of the solid sphere alone
as seen from our actual viewpoint on earth. As the solid sphere moves east (to the
left) along the ecliptic, which is its axis of rotation, it carries the planet up to a
northern extreme and down to a southern extreme which will be reached at
points on the celestial sphere along the 'tropic' lines shown. Putting these three
two-dimensional diagrams together into a single three-dimensional (mental)
model, we envisage (i) a torus (doughnut) formed by the revolution of the
solid sphere as it is carried round within the 'skin' of the rotating hollow sphere;
(ii) a helix traced on the surface of this torus by the planet revolving on the
circumference of the rotating solid sphere. The number of turns of the helix per
rotation of the hollow sphere (< 1 , 1 , > 1 ) depends on the speed of rotation of the
solid sphere relative to the speed of rotation of the hollow sphere.

The good news, for an astronomer in the early Hellenistic period, is that the
model for the first time introduces the concept of motion in 'depth' (bathos). The
previous model, that of Eudoxus, Callippus, and Aristotle, kept the planets at
unvarying distances from the earth, their motions governed by the rotations of an
increasingly complex system of nested concentric spheres. The bad news is that
while the helicoidal model imports motion in 'depth' [bathos) into planetary

244

The Celestial Helix

Outer surface of
hollow sphere

HEAVEN -<

Inner surface of
hollow sphere

>- EARTH

Fig. \Gb. The 'helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 2. Horizontal cross-section of 'hollow'
and solid spheres, seen from 'above' (i.e. north), showing Moon's motion in mekos
(longitude) and bathos (depth)

Northern Extreme

EAST ^

ECLIPTIC

Southern Extreme

Fig. 16c. The 'helicoidal' model of lunar motion, 3. Vertical cross-section of 'solid' sphere
as seen from earth, showing Moon's motion in mekos (longitude) and platos (latitude)

theory, it does not by itself address the problem of anomaly', the observed fact
that all the planets travel eastward at non-uniform speeds and five of them
interrupt eastward motion with periods of westward or 'retrograde' motion.
We know the classic solution to anomaly in the models of Hipparchus and
Ptolemy. Apparent differences in speed are accommodated by postulating either

The Celestial Helix 245

eccentric orbits 6 or epicycles. 7 The epicycle/eccentric theory solves the problem
of anomalies in speed by constructing figures which put the planets at varying
depths in space, in the process saving Greek astronomy's first principle of uniform
circular motion. The helicoidal model cannot have been intended to solve
anomaly. Rather it was put forward, if one may infer so from Theon several
centuries later, on a priori philosophical grounds in order to maintain a min-
imum number of uniformly rotating spheres after the pattern of Eudoxus but
without his insistence that all the spheres be concentric.

The helicoidal model lingered on, ill-understood, through Hellenistic times
and beyond. What kept it in play was its appeal to philosophical cosmologists,
not to mathematical astronomers. It is no coincidence that the title of Theon's
work (in Dupuis's French translation, 1892) is Exposition des connaissances
mathematiques utiles pour la lecture de Platon, or that another author who speaks
of helixes and helicoidal orbits is the Stoic Cleomedes (1.2.60, 61 Todd, 99-100
Goulet, 42 Bowen and Todd); 8 nor, for that matter, is it a coincidence that
Cleomedes' prime source is Posidonius (Bowen and Todd 2004: 5-11), a
philosophical cosmologist if there ever was one (Goulet 1980: 10-11). It was
among 'those around Posidonius', as we have seen (ch. 9, sect. 1 1), that the 'ideal
month with the nodes fixed in Taurus and Scorpius was developed.

Posidonius furnishes a sure terminus post for Cleomedes. He may have lived
and written at any time in the first or second centuries ce but not much later, for
as Bowen and Todd argue (2004: 2-4) pedagogical Stoic lectures of his type and
style were out of vogue by the third century. 9 We cannot say whether he lived
before or somewhat after or contemporaneously with Theon. Nothing suggests
that he influenced or was influenced by Theon in regards to the idea of helicoidal
planetary motion. As is usual in this sort of inquiry, filiation is not the issue.
Rather, we attempt first to identify a certain cluster or family of representations
and then to see in what sources these representations show up as they drift down
the course of time.

For that reason it is of the greatest interest to us that having spoken about
helicoidal planetary orbits Cleomedes immediately characterizes the four quad-
rants of a single turn of the spiral in precisely the same terms as Antiochus of
Athens (Ch. 9, sects. 6 and 9): exaltation humiliated, humiliation humiliated,
humiliation exalted, exaltation exalted. In this context it is clear that by 'exalt-
ation' (hypsos) Cleomedes intends 'north' and by 'humiliation' (tapeinoma)

6 The planet at apogee appears to move more slowly than at perigee.

7 The planet, revolving on the circumference of an epicycle the centre of which revolves on the
circumference of a deferent circle whose centre is the earth, will appear to be moving eastward at
varying speeds or even backwards if its westward speed on the epicycle is greater than the eastward
speed of the centre of the epicycle on the deferent.

8 Because of the complexities of numeration in Cleomedes, I follow the citation to Todd's edition
(1990) with page numbers in the translations of Goulet (1980) and Bowen and Todd (2004).

9 Goulet (1980: 6-8) and Bowen and Todd (2004: 4, 89, n. 16) are properly sceptical of
Neugebauer's fourth-century date (1975: 960).

246 The Celestial Helix

'south'. Later, however, he applies the same pair of terms to apogee and perigee or
rather to the far and near semicircles of a planet's eccentric orbit. He is unaware
of this contradiction, which suggests that he did not properly understand how
the two motions in 'height', latitudinal motion north and south of the ecliptic,
and motion in 'depth {bathos) away from and towards the earth, were integrated
in the helicoidal model.

As late as Proclus in the fifth century ce we find, specifically in his Commen-
tary on Plato's Timaeus {In Timaeum), the indiscriminate conflation of the various
directions of planetary motion under the term 'helix'. Proclus has to use the term
because Plato did {Timaeus 39a6), but the way in which he actually employs it in
his explication of what the master must have meant {In Timaeum 3.78.29—80.22
Diehl) betrays a poorly understood memory, similar to Theon's and Cleomedes',
of the post-Platonic and post-Eudoxan helicoidal model. We can see this best at
3.79.7-11, where Proclus relates the helix to two pairs of opposite motions:

{la) motion 'to the east' = planetary motion in longitude {mekos)

{lb) motion 'to the west' = universal daily motion

{2a) motion 'in depth {kata bathos) = 'nearer to the earth {prosgeioteros)
and 'further from the earth {apogeioteros)

{2b) motion 'in latitude' {kata platos) = 'more to the north' {boreioteros)
and 'more to the south {noteioteros)

In our helicoidal model it is the rotation of the solid sphere (as in Fig. iGd) that
causes the planet to move simultaneously in depth and in latitude. Had Proclus
fully understood the model, he would have realized that because it introduces
motion in depth it is no more capable of retaining strict Platonic or Eudoxan
concentricity than the epicycles and eccentric circles of mainline astronomy
which he rejected. 10

A single change to Proclus' description would return it to coherence, logic, and
a rough reconciliation with facts and appearances. I do not propose emendation,
of course, for my point is precisely that Proclus and probably his sources before
him did not fully understand what they were talking about. Proclus' mistake was
to leave universal daily motion {lb) in his account of the helix. What generates
the helix by turning the circle formed by the rotation of the solid sphere {2a +
2b) into a spiral is planetary motion in longitude alone {la). For the Sun and the
Moon eastward motion is all that need be accounted for. For the other five
planets westward, retrograde motion must also be accommodated, but this does
not require a separate principle of westward motion.

It is time to bite the bullet of anomaly. As we saw above, the helicoidal model
in itself cannot solve anomaly, the fact, that is, that the planets do not move
eastward (in longitude, mekos) at uniform speeds. The Sun and the Moon
move now faster, now slower, and the other five planets even slow to a stop

10 On Proclus' rejection of epicycles and eccentrics see Pedersen and Hannah 2002: 74—5.

The Celestial Helix 247

and reverse direction westward (termed 'retrograde' motion). The only way in
which the helicoidal model can account for varying speeds and retrograde
motion is by conceding non-uniformity and reversibility to the revolutions of
the hollow spheres which carry the solid spheres around the heavens. In other
words, to persevere with the helicoidal model one must say in effect: 'What
problem of anomaly? The varying speeds and reversals which you see are real.' In
a recent article S. Pedersen and R. Hannah (2002) have suggested that Proclus
argued precisely that (although of course not in terms of the 'helicoidal model'
first postulated here). In Timaeum 3.56.31-57 demonstrates that their conten-
tion is correct:

Plato at least in the Republic [10.616d-e], when he makes the weights [i.e. the composite
whorl of the 'Spindle of Necessity'] homocentric and in these the seven circles, and
mentions only these, but not the epicycles, seems to attribute irregularity (anomalian) to
the stars themselves, this same irregularity also having orderliness (to tetagmenon) (for it is
restored to itself in ordered periods of time), as to beings intermediate between those
moved entirely regularly (homalos) and those moved entirely irregularly (anomalos); for
they have been assigned a movement regularly irregular or irregularly regular, (trans.
Pedersen and Hannah 2002: 74)

Interestingly, what is needed to restore regularity to irregularity is another
dimension altogether — time: 'for it is restored to itself in ordered periods of time'
(apokathistatai gar pros heauten dia tetagmenon chronon). Whether for that reason
or not, Proclus closes the section on the helix with mention of a 'helicoidal' time
god (3.80.12-17): 'Surely the Theurgist, 11 when he hymned "Time the Helicoi-
dal" as at the same time young and old, was not unconcerned with this very fact,
that the measures of all sorts of temporal periods become visible to us through the
motion of the planets in a helix.' One cannot help but think of Mithraism's
snake-encircled time god and the reclining snake-encircled figure, mentioned
above, who hails Mithras as he joins Sol in the ascending sun-chariot. Again, I
throw in the necessary caution. The mysteries did not self-consciously encode a
particular model of helicoidal motion. Think rather of the flow of representa-
tions down the linked channels of a common star-talk culture.

However he construed the figure itself, Proclus is clear about the place of the
planetary helix in the grand cosmological hierarchy.

The helix is proper to the planets as beings which are spatially intermediate between the
fixed stars and things below the Moon. The fixed stars move only in a circle and things
below the Moon only in a straight line (3.79.12—18).

The figure of the helix is not a meaningless epiphenomenon (symptoma kenon). Rather, it
is the intermediary [lit. 'fills the middle'] between bodies which move in straight lines and

1 ] Proclus refers here to one or other of the Julians to whom the Chaldaean Oracles, a late
second-century CE collection, were attributed. This fragment was omitted from des Places' edition

(1971).

248 The Celestial Helix

bodies which move in circles; for as was said, the circle belongs to the realm of the fixed
stars, the straight line to the realm of genesis, and the helix to the realm of the planets
(3.80.5-9).

Dangerous though it is to draw parallels between a fifth-century philosopher and
mysteries moribund or dead at the time when he wrote, we can appeal to Proclus'
intense conservatism in claiming that these are echoes not of the Mithraic
mysteries themselves but of a stream of cosmological thinking which in the
mysteries issued in representations of a Sun god worshipped as the great inter-
mediary between heaven and earth.

In the extant sources there is, to my knowledge, only one authority who came
anywhere near to understanding the helicoidal model, the by-now familiar
Antiochus of Athens. He it is who preserves a single priceless nugget of quanti-
tative data.

Antiochus, like Theon and Cleomedes, uses the language of helicoidal orbits
(CG4G 8.3.1 12.30-6 = 7.127.27-33): 12

Carried round in a helix (helikoeidos) in the depth (en toi bathei) of the signs, the planets
make four figures (schemata): (1) the first when descending from the highest point of orbit
(apo tes anotatou apsidos katabainontes) they are said to be humiliated with respect to their
exaltation (hypselon tapeinousthai); (2) the second when [sc. descending] from there to
their lowest [sc. point of orbit] they are said to be humiliated with respect to their
humiliation (tapeinon tapeinousthai); (3) the third when ascending from the lowest
humiliation to the middle (ek tou katotatou tapeinou epi to meson anabainontes) they are
said to be exalted with respect to their humiliation (tapeinon hypsousthai); the fourth when
[sc. ascending] from the middle to the highest [sc. point of orbit] they are said to be
exalted with respect to their exaltation (hypselon hypsousthai).

Antiochus' rather murky description at least makes it clear that he is speaking of a
figure formed in three dimensions, and that 'height' and the 'up/down' opposites
refer to location and motion both on the vertical north-south axis and on the
horizontal apogee-perigee axis (see Fig. 16a).

In the particular case of the Moon, for whom I think the helicoidal model was
primarily developed, Antiochus takes anomaly into account (CCAG
8.3.112.36-113.2 = 7.127.33-5). This he does in the only way possible, by
factoring in different speeds of eastward (longitudinal) motion depending on the
sector of the helix occupied by the Moon. On the 'up helix' (ten and helika) she
travels 11° a day, on the 'down helix' (ten kato helika) 14°. That can only mean
that when the Moon is on what we would call the 'outer' sector of her orbit and
the Greeks the 'higher' or 'deeper' she moves more slowly eastward than when she
is on the 'inner' (to us) or 'lower' (to the Greeks) sector. In terms of rotating
spheres, as the Moon's solid sphere rotates at a constant speed it is carried eastward

12 The two citations represent versions of the same passage in two different manuscripts. I have
translated, as literally as possible, from the first cited.

The Celestial Helix 249

by the rotation of the hollow sphere at varying speeds. Strictly speaking, it is
immaterial whether the hollow sphere rotates clockwise or counterclockwise, but
imaginatively it makes more sense for the sphere to rotate clockwise (from the
point of view in Fig. \6a) so that the 'upper' or 'deeper' sector of the helix
coincides with the 'ascending' or northward sector.

Just how sure was Antiochus' grasp of the helicoidal model and the theory of
two rotating spheres which underlies it? That is impossible to tell, because much
may have been distorted in subsequent transmission, 13 but it hardly matters. For
the Moon at least he transmits enough data for us to reconstruct the model and
the crucial modification which makes it work. The variation in the speed of the
Moon eastward is of great significance, for it wears its Babylonian origins on its
sleeve. For the Greeks it was axiomatic that all anomaly be resolved into uniform
circular motion; hence their increasingly elaborate geometrical models. For the
Babylonians, varying speed was an acceptable reality. In fact what Antiochus
preserves is precisely analogous to the Babylonian 'step function' for the Sun in
the so-called 'System A.

Generating a helicoidal orbit from the rotation of two spheres is of course as
Greek as formulating a step function is Babylonian. There is however one other
datum relevant to the helicoidal model that comes from Babylon, and this too
concerns specifically the orbit of the Moon. In Chapter 9 (sect. 9) we noticed the
strange practice, most fully discussed by the astrologer Vettius Valens, 14 of
measuring the 'argument of latitude', which is the Moon's distance travelled in
orbit, {a) from the northern extreme rather than the ascending node, and {b) in
units not of degrees but of 'steps' and 'winds':

(1) first quadrant = north wind descending = six steps down

(2) second quadrant = south wind descending = six steps down

(3) third quadrant = south wind ascending = six steps up

(4) fourth quadrant = north wind ascending = six steps up

In Greek star-talk steps and winds are reducible to degrees of longitude. A step is
15°, a wind is 90°. The system is completely redundant; so presumably it was
retained in a limited circle of star-talkers out of an archaizing sense of the appro-
priate units of measure in the context of the argument of latitude. But redundancies
are seldom invented; they are the vestiges of once useful constructs. What was the
original construct which the steps and winds served to measure? I suggest that it was
a construct which employed the Babylonian parameter for the width of the lunar
orbit — 12° or 6° north plus 6° south of the solar orbit or ecliptic (Neugebauer
1975: 514-15, 520, 1345 (Fig. 67 to Book2)). We know that this value was indeed
taken over into pre-Hipparchan Greek astronomy (ibid. 626).

13 The passage immediately following (CCAG 8.3.1 13.2-7 = 7.127.35—128.4) appears garbled.

14 Antiochus also explains the winds and steps, but he applies the system to the solar orbit, not
the lunar orbit ( CCAG 7.128.1 4-24) .

250

The Celestial Helix

In Babylonian mathematical astronomy lunar latitude was expressed 'in units
called "barley corn" (/<?)' (Neugebauer 1975: 514), seventy-two of which make a
degree. 15 I suggest that at some stage in the transmission of star- talk from the
Babylonian to the Greek world these units underwent a name change, not into
degrees but into equivalent units called 'steps' (one step =1°). On this hypoth-
esis the step would originally have been simply a unit of lunar latitude. From her
northern extreme the Moon takes (1) six steps down to the ecliptic ('north wind
descending'), then (2) another six steps down to the southern extreme ('south
wind descending'), then (3) six steps back up to the ecliptic ('south wind
ascending'), and finally (4) another six steps up to the northern extreme (see
Fig. 17a).

At some later stage, to continue the story, this measure of lunar latitude was
applied to a helicoidal kinematic model, self-evidently a Greek construct, and a
Babylonian step-function parameter for anomaly (11° per day on the 'up helix',
14° per day on the 'down helix') was also applied. As a result, what you see in
Figure 17 a as a vertical bar and scale of latitude becomes a vertical cross-section
of the Moon's 'solid' sphere seen edge on. From our vantage point on earth the
Moon is carried up and down this cross-section as the solid sphere rotates. At the
same time the Moon is also carried eastward (to the left) as the solid sphere is
carried in that direction by the rotation of the 'hollow' sphere (see Fig 17 b).

The Moon's apparent motion up and down the cross-section is non-uniform.
It will appear to move from south to north or from north to south more rapidly
when at the ecliptic than when at the extremes. This lack of uniformity, which is
what one actually sees, is a consequence of the sphere's uniform rotation (compare
the rise and fall of gondolas on a Ferris wheel seen sideways on). It is a grand

NORTH

EAST

1. north 'wind' descending

4. north 'wind' ascending

six 'steps' down i

six 'steps' up

2. south 'wind' descending
six 'steps' down

3. south 'wind' ascending
k six 'steps' up

WEST

SOUTH

Fig. 17a. The winds and steps of the Moon, 1

15 J. M. Steele is currently researching an analogous lunar band in the observational records of
Babylonian astronomy (lecture, University of Toronto, Jan. 2005). The unit there is the 'cubit'
(= 2°). The band measures 6 cubits in breadth from northern to southern extreme.

The Celestial Helix
NORTH

251

EAST

11714° per day

* i

WEST

SOUTH
Fig. 17 b. The winds and steps of the Moon, 2

example of what Proclus (above) was to call anomaly in uniformity and uni-
formity in anomaly.

When you combine this apparently non-uniform south-north/north-south
motion with eastward motion the figure you see will be the familiar sinusoidal
curve of the lunar orbit traced on a plane surface, as in Figure 12. It is at this stage
of development that the 'step' migrates, as it were, from latitude to longitude.
Instead of a 1° unit of latitude, the step becomes the distance in longitude
corresponding to a 1° change in latitude. More precisely, it becomes the distance
in longitude covered during a 1° change in latitude. That distance will vary: it will
be greatest when the Moon is at her northern or southern limits and least when she
is at one or other of the nodes. 16 Originally, then, a step was not precisely 15°
(one-sixth of a 90° quadrant). It became so, in my scenario, only when its original
metrological function and underlying kinematic model were forgotten.

Logically, the next step in the development of a helicoidal model for lunar
motion would be to factor in the different lengths of the tropical, draconitic, and
anomalistic months. The tropical month is the time taken by the mean Moon to
return to the same longitude (27.32 days). In the helicoidal model this return is
effected by the rotation of the hollow sphere. The draconitic month is the time
taken for the Moon to return to the same latitude (27.21 days). In the helicoidal
model this return is effected by the rotation of the solid sphere. The anomalistic
month is the time taken for the Moon to return to the same point in the cycle of
speed of eastward motion (27.55 days). In the helicoidal model (as refined by
Antiochus or his source) this will occur when the rotation of the hollow sphere
has completed a cycle of varying speed at 1 1° per day and 14° per day. Since these
three months are of different lengths, the Moon herself, in successive cycles of
the helix, will return to different points on the torus formed by the revolution of
the solid sphere.

16 The precise distance will also depend on her eastward speed, i.e. whether 'slow' or 'fast' in the
cycle of anomaly.

252 The Celestial Helix

Whether those three lunar periods were actually factored into the helicoidal
model, and if so by whom, we do not know. It may well be that the model
remained a work in progress, an elegant geometrical and kinematic construct
with some interesting cosmological implications, but abandoned by serious
mathematical astronomers in favour of the Hipparchan and Ptolemaic model
of epicycles and eccentric circles.

The point of departure for this excursus was the occurrence together in the
same source, Diogenes Laertius' brief report of Stoic star-talk (Lives of the
Philosophers 7.144-6), of references to (1) the Moon's 'helicoidal' orbit, and
(2) the fixing of the lunar nodes at Taurus 0° and Scorpius 0°. In section 11 of
Chapter 9 I proposed that the latter reference, the fixing of the lunar nodes at
those two points by 'those around Posidonius', relates to a larger project, namely
the definition of an 'ideal' month in which the Moon will reach her northern
extreme in Leo, the house of the Sun. In such a month, should the Sun also be in
his house, he cannot suffer eclipse. The impetus for the creation of this ideal
month, I argued, were the total eclipses of the Moon in 63 bce, the first on 3 May
when the Moon was at the descending node in Scorpius, the second on 27 October
when she was at the ascending node in Taurus. (Both eclipses were visible in
Anatolia, weather permitting.) The inauguration of this ideal month, I further
argued, was memorialized in the massive complex of statues and reliefs in the
hierothesion of King Antiochus of Commagene on the summit of Nemrud
Dagh. The inauguration occurred in July of 62 bce, when the actual month
coincided quite well with the ideal month. As you may see in Figure 15,
conjunction and new moon occurred on 5 July with the two luminaries approach-
ing Leo. 17 The Moon reached her northern extreme the following day, 6 July,
just below the Lion's jaws. The planet Jupiter was then immediately to her south.
That night she passed Regulus, 'the royal star at the heart of the Lion', and the next
day, 7 July, she joined Mercury and Mars below the Lion's belly. On the evening of
that day the waxing crescent might have been visible for the first time setting in
the west after sunset. All preceding events were invisible, even when above the
horizon, because of the proximity of the Sun, as of course was the following
conjunction which closed the month late on 3 August with the Sun and
Moon below the Lion's belly (and all three well below the horizon). So by
'inauguration' I do not mean a ceremonial star-watching there and then, 18 but a

17 On any definition of the signs and constellations, the Moon and the Sun were still in Cancer,
the Moon's house.

18 By a felicitous coincidence, we do actually have a reference to star-watchers on the Taurus
mountains, of which Nemrud Dagh is one of the highest, in Manilius {Astronomica 1.402), the
astrological poet wtiting half-a-century or so later. Manilius 1 star-gazers ate precisely the fantasy that
the actual memorial complex on Nemrud Dagh would generate. Anothet nice coincidence: what
Manilius' mountain top observers are watching for is the heliacal rising of Sirius in the second half of
July; omens indicated by the position of the Moon ('in what house') at the rising of Sirius are the
subject of an excerpt from — our ubiquitous Antiochus of Athens (CCAG 4.153— 4)!

The Celestial Helix 253

recognition that the cluster of celestial events, subsequently memorialized at the
hierothesion, had indeed taken place and an approximation to a Sun-worshipper's
ideal month had occurred.

The 'ideal month', I propose, was itself part of the project which we have
explored in this chapter, a helicoidal model of planetary and, in particular, lunar
motion, initiated, if we are to believe Theon of Smyrna (above), by Eudemus in
the late fourth century bce as a corrective to the over-elaborate model of
concentric spheres propounded by Eudoxus, Callippus, and Aristotle. The
model, as we have seen, retained pure spherical motion but abandoned concen-
tricity. Its most remarkable innovation was to treat anomaly as an actual variation
in speed rather than as an epiphenomenon of uniform motion on an epicycle or
eccentric circle. Antiochus of Athens preserves for us a two-speed function for the
Moon of obvious Babylonian origin. The helicoidal model was also, as we have
seen, the matrix for lunar measurements in 'winds' and 'steps', ultimately also
from Babylon.

It has not been my intent here to trace the precise filiation of the helicoidal
model or of the ideal month and the esoteric quartering of the Mithraic
mysteries, still less to propose these star-talk constructs as arcana of the
mysteries transmitted from Commagene and then handed down from learned
Mithraic Father to learned Mithraic Father as explicit elements of doctrine.
Rather, as I have insisted throughout, they descend in a loosely cohering
stream of representations transmitted through both text and visual image.
What are still extant are the merest fragments of these star-talk constructs,
represented as often as not in sources which did not properly understand them.
So the best we can hope for is to isolate the typical markers of the star-talk
constructs, such as the characterization of planetary orbits as 'helicoidal', and
to see in what sources they show up. Remember too that our stream of repre-
sentations is but one of several cross-currents which merge and separate. No
current is ever entirely distinct or self-contained. I claim no more than that
certain Mithraic representations, for example what I have called the 'esoteric' or
'lunar' quartering, belong to a larger tradition of star-talk with identifiable
markers, and that they can be better understood by exploring this tradition
both upstream and downstream.

There are further explorations to be made, but not here. Instead I shall close
with a conjecture concerning one of the names which has cropped up again and
again both here and in Chapter 9 — the astrologer Antiochus of Athens (Cumont
1934; Gundels 1966: 115-17; Pingree 1977). But another Antiochus has also
made an appearance, Antiochus I of Commagene. The name Antiochus recurs in
the annals of the dynasty, and we find it held for the last time by a prominent
Athenian at the turn of the first and second centuries ce, C. Iulius Antiochus
Epiphanes Philopappus, the grandson on his father's side of the last reigning king
of Commagene, Antiochus IV, and on his mother's side of the politically

254 The Celestial Helix

powerful astrologer Ti. Claudius Balbillus. 19 I have argued elsewhere that the
Mithraic mysteries originated in the circle of the deposed but still highly regarded
Commagenian dynasty in exile (Beck 1998<2). That is why features of the
astrology of Balbillus, their kinsman by marriage, resonate with the star-talk of
the Mithraic mysteries (Beck 2001, 2004c: 324—9). What conclusions may we
draw from the fact that the astrology of 'Antiochus of Athens' likewise resonates
with the star-talk of the Mithraic mysteries and with Commagenian star-talk
before? Perhaps that Antiochus of Athens' was the 'grandfather-loving' C. Iulius
Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus.

Two final 'coincidences'. First, it is Antiochus of Athens who preserves for us a
prediction of 'cosmic apokatastasis' as the simultaneous conjunction of all the
planets on the cusp of Cancer and Leo (CCAG 1.163.15-23):

Saturn makes the grand (megisten) apokatastasis in 265 years, Jupiter in 427, Mars in 284,
the Sun in 1461, Venus in 1151, Mercury in 480, the Moon in 25. The cosmic (kosmike)
apokatastasis takes place in 1,753,005 years, 20 and then the conjunction of all the stars
[i.e. planets] in the thirtieth degree of Cancer or the first of Leo [i.e. Cancer 30° = Leo 0°]
takes place, and Fulfilment (ekplerosis) occurs.

The cusp of Cancer and Leo, as we saw in Chapter 9 (sects. 9-11) and
throughout this chapter, was a cardinal point — the cardinal point — in the eso-
teric quartering of the Mithraic mysteries and cognate star-talk traditions,
including the Commagenian. It is worth recalling the emphasis placed on
apokatastasis in this tradition as that which restores regularity to irregularity 21

Our second 'coincidence' comes from Antiochus' calendar (Boll 1910), the
same calendar which marks 25 December with 'Birthday of the Sun — light
increases' (above, Ch. 9, sect. 6). For 2 August, the Sun being then in Leo, the
calendar announces: 'the exultation of the Dog with the leaping-out of the Lion
{gauriama Kynos syn exhalmati Leontos).' These two striking star-talk phrases
refer, in more matter-of-fact terms, to the heliacal rising, or first visibility in
the pre-dawn twilight, of Sirius and Leo. Sirius, the Dog-star, is the brightest star
in the heavens, and its heliacal or morning rising was eagerly anticipated as one of
the most significant markers in the seasonal and astronomical year. In Egypt its
appearance traditionally marked the flood season and the beginning of the
'Sothic' year. As we saw (above, n. 18), Antiochus himself transmitted, probably

19 C. Iulius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus — Prosopographia Imperii Romani 2 4.141 Iulius
no. 151. Philopappus retained the courtesy title of 'king' (basileus) . He was archon and agonothete at
Athens, suffect consul (109) and an arval brother in Rome. He belonged to the intellectual and
cultural circle of Plutatch. His monument, a sort of mini-Nemtud-Dagh adapted to a Graeco-
Roman context, still stands on the Hill of the Muses facing the Acropolis at Athens.

20 One need not emend, but the 'cotrect' number is 1,753,200, i.e. 1,200 X 1,461 (Neugebauer
1975: 605-6, 618). 'Years' in this context ate Egyptian years of 365 days: it takes 1,461 Egyptian
yeats for the Sun to complete 1 ,460 true years of 365 t days. On this passage see also Beck 1988: 41;
1994& 288.

21 See above on Proclus, In Timaeum 3.56.31—57; see also Pedersen and Hannah 2002: 74—8.

The Celestial Helix 255

from Babylonian sources, a list of omens indicated by the position of the Moon
at the rising of Sirius, and Manilius has his not altogether imaginary watchers on
the Taurus mountains observe the event in order to 'learn the various outcomes
for crops' (1.403).

The date on which a star 'rises' depends on the latitude of the observer.
Antiochus records three dates for the rising of Sirius: 19 July in Egypt, 25 July
for the fourth klima (i.e. the latitude of Rhodes), and 29 July for the sixth klima
(i.e. the latitude of mid-Pontus). Presumably, then, the Dog 'exults' on 2 August
because he is newly risen in all klimata.

The rising of a constellation takes place over a number of days even at the
same site, since it occupies an extended area, not just a single point like a star. For
the heliacal rising of Leo Antiochus gives three dates: the first, presumably for the
westernmost stars, falls on 1 August, the day before the Lion 'leaps out';
the second, for Regulus 'on the Lion's heart', falls on 1 1 August; and the third,
for the star on the Lion's tail, on 28 August. Exhalma is an astrological technical
term, first attested in Balbillus (CCAG 8.3. 104), 22 although Antiochus does not
use it in its technical sense (Boll 1910: 28). In this context it appears to be a
dramatic star- talk synonym for 'rising' (anatole). The Lion 'leaps out' into
visibility once more as the Sun, its master, moves through and beyond it.

In star-talk the rising of Sirius, the Sun's sojourn in Leo, and the sequential
risings of Leo's stars are intimately linked. Technically, both Canis Major and
Canis Minor (with their respective lucidae, Sirius and Procyon) are paranatel-
lonta of Leo, constellations which 'rise alongside' the Lion as both sign and
constellation (see Ch. 9, sect. 2. A5, and Fig. 7). Manilius has this to say of Sirius
as the paranatellon of Leo (5.206-11, trans. Goold): 'But when the Lion of
Nemea lifts into view his enormous gaping jaws, the brilliant constellation of the
Dog appears: it barks forth flame, raves with its fire, and doubles the burning heat
of the Sun. When it puts forth its torch to the earth and discharges its rays, the
earth foresees its conflagration and tastes its ultimate fate.' This is but the
introduction to twenty-eight lines on the rising of Sirius, a topic to which
Manilius has already devoted sixteen lines in Book 1 (396-411). Both passages
dwell on the violence and destructiveness of the heat which Sirius/Canicula and
the Lion — more precisely the Sun in Leo — bring to earth. 'No star reaches the
lands more violently {violentius) than Sirius' (1.397). It is Sirius of course who
brings the 'dog days' and with them the heat prostration and lassitude of late
summer. 23 In the passage from Book 5 quoted above Manilius sees in the annual
rising of Sirius a foretaste of those Last Days which Antiochus was to define as the

22 i.e. Antiochus' grandfather, on my hypothesis.

23 Notice how Manilius uses the language of cause and effect. Sirius at its rising not only signals
the summer heat; it also causes it. The astronomer Geminus (first cent, ce) effectively challenges this
causative view of risings specifically in the case of Sirius (17.26—45).

256 The Celestial Helix

grand conjunction of all seven planets in the same part of the heavens, where
Cancer ends and Leo begins.

The celestial Dogs are not the only southern paranatellonta of Cancer and Leo.
Hydra's head rises at the same time of year (see Figs. 1, 7, and 15). As Aratus, who
also describes the paranatellonta at some length, writes: 'Up rises (antellei) the
head of Hydra and the bright-eyed Hare [the constellation Lepus] and Procyon
and the forepaws of the blazing Dog' {Phaenomena 594—5). Now observe how in
the tauroctony:

the dog,

whose star-talk meaning is the celestial Dogs,

and the snake,

whose star-talk meaning is Hydra,

dart up at the blood flowing from the wound struck by Mithras,

whose star-talk meaning is Sun-in-Leo.

Our new-won familiarity with the more exotic reaches of star-talk discourse lets
us appreciate how Antiochus intends the same celestial event and the same
spatio-temporal configuration with his calendar entry:

2 August — the exultation of the Dog with the leaping-out of the Lion.

Conclusions: a new basis for interpreting the

mysteries

In the first chapter (sect. 3) I set out what I called a 'template' for the re-
description of the Mithraic mysteries in the form of six propositions. To these
six propositions I now return to see what sense they make at the end of our
explorations. Remember that they are in no sense Articles of Religion. You may
want to review their status, as I see it, in the first two sections of Chapter 1 .

The propositions were advanced in two versions, the first in neutral language
(e.g. 'The mysteries give symbolic expression to . . . '), the second in language
reflecting the point of view of the initiate (e.g. 'In the mysteries, the initiate
apprehends symbolically...'). Clearly the second version is prior; the first is
merely a scholar's construct which feigns objectivity. So I shall recapitulate our six
propositions from the initiate's perspective. 1

A. In the mysteries, the initiate apprehends symbolically two axioms or
ultimate sacred postulates:

(1) DEUS SOL INVICTUS MITHRAS,

(2) 'Harmony of tension in opposition'.

B. The initiate apprehends these axioms in an indeterminate number of
themes or motifs, e.g. the theme of descent and ascent.

C. The initiate apprehends the axioms and themes in one or more of four
domains:

(1) the sacred story, the deeds of Mithras,

(2) the cosmos,

(3) the sublunary world,

(4) the destiny of human (especially initiates') souls.

1 In Beck 2004f (46—9), as an imaginative experiment, I set out a third version in which the six
propositions were expressed from the divine perspective in the first person, as e.g. in an Isiac
aretalogy. What warrants this version is the fact that initiates perceive their mysteries as the gift of
the god, not as their own cognitive experiences. In the academy we can deal only with the latter,
recognizing that in the mithraeum the former prevailed.

258 Conclusions

D. The initiate apprehends the symbol complexes conveying the axioms and
motifs of the mysteries in their various domains on structured sites. In the
mysteries there are three principal and distinctive structures:

(1) the physical structure of the icon of the tauroctony (with its
reverse = the banquet scene, plus peripheral scenes),

(2) the physical structure of the mithraeum,

(3) the organizational structure of the seven grades.

E. The initiate apprehends the symbols in one or more of four modes:

(1) ritual action,

(2) the perception of meaningful iconography,

(3) the giving and receiving of words (logia, explications, teaching, esoteric
epigraphic formulae),

(4) ethical behaviour consonant with the mysteries (e.g. Mithraic Lions
behave in an esoterically appropriate leonine way).

F. The mysteries' common symbolic idiom across axioms, motifs, domains,
structures, and modes is the language of astronomy/ astrology or star-talk.

On reviewing the six propositions it strikes me that more needs to be said on
only one of them, Proposition B on themes or motifs. Chapter 9 was entirely
devoted to star-talk as the idiom of the mysteries (F), and Chapter 8 to
establishing that a symbol system can in certain circumstances function as a
language and that the ancients themselves treated the heavens as text and the stars
as intelligent communicators. As regards Proposition D on the initiate's appre-
hension of symbols in complexes on three principal structured sites, we have
explored at some length how this was effected in the tauroctony in Chapter 9 and
in the mithraeum in Chapter 8. 2 The 'modes' of apprehending and engaging
with symbols (in ritual action, perception of iconography, explications, appro-
priate ethical behaviour, and so on — Proposition E) do not need systematic
treatment either, once the chimaera of a coherent Mithraic doctrine and belief
system has been exorcised, as it was in Chapters 2-4. The 'domains' (C) are
likewise self-explanatory. In Chapter 9 (end of sect. 6, start of sect. 7) we saw how
a change of domain sometimes entails a change of meaning for a star-talk sign.
This was important, for it shows how apparent paradox can sometimes be
explained — but not explained away! — as an instance of the lexical and semantic
flexibility of language.

To say nothing further about Mithraism's two axioms or ultimate sacred
postulates (Proposition A) might seem bizarre in a Conclusion. But is it really?
If it still needs to be established that the two axioms, (1) deus sol invictus
mithras and (2) 'Harmony of tension in opposition', are the golden threads
running through and holding together the Mithraic mysteries, then I have failed

2 In the grade hierarchy in Ch. 5, sect. 5.

Conclusions 259

in my task. One does not prove these things, one shows them by demonstration
and iteration.

If anything further needs to be said about the axioms it can be said in the
context of some brief remarks about the 'motifs' or 'themes' in and through
which the initiate apprehends them (Proposition B). In principle at least there
was no limit to the number of themes, unlike the axioms (A), domains (C),
structured sites (D), and modes (E). In their explications Mithraic Fathers could
and no doubt did develop many themes which have disappeared from the record.
Some of these were probably quite idiosyncratic. But all save the most evanescent
would have instantiated one or both of the axioms. More successfully or less
successfully, each would have said something explicitly or implicitly about the
solar invincibility of the god Mithras and the tensed harmony of opposites. If we
think of the mysteries as an evolving stream of mental and public representations,
we might think of effective instantiation of the axioms as the main factor in the
selection of successful representations. Those which effectively instantiated the
axioms survived; those which did not did not survive. The principal themes
which we can still discern are the 'fit' survivors of a process of selection at work at
a level well below the conscious choice of initiates. 3

In the summary above I cited 'descent and ascent' as an example of a theme,
and we saw in Chapter 9 how that theme operated in different domains: in the
cosmic domain in the elevation and subordination of the journeying Sun and
Moon; in the domain of the sublunary world in the growth and dying down of
vegetation; in the domain of human destinies in the descent and return of souls.
Our first conclusion must therefore be that themes of consequence both span
domains and integrate them. Secondly, nowhere was our theme simple or
unparadoxical. Indeed, part of its function appears to have been precisely to
generate paradox. Thirdly, complexity and paradox were never pointless; mean-
ing was always present and discernible in star-talk utterances. Fourthly, the
theme, while complex in its applications, was reducible to a straightforward
polarity: descent versus ascent.

Here we face the problem of circularity. Having proclaimed 'harmony of
tension in opposition' the second 'ultimate sacred postulate' of the Mithraic
mysteries, themes of opposition are the rabbits I am going to pull out of the
top hat. The question then becomes, how authentic is that second postulate? In
answer, I can point to the most explicit symbol of opposition in the mysteries, the
pair of torchbearers, the 'twins' who are identical in appearance yet also polar
opposites in that one carries his torch raised, the other lowered; and I can
demonstrate, as I did in Chapter 9, how they function as star-talk signs conveying
paired oppositional meanings. I can also argue, as I did in Chapter 5 (sect. 8) that
Porphyry, De antro 29 is based on a Mithraic list of star-talk oppositions. Yet of

3 I realize my 'themes' are starting to sound suspiciously like Richard Dawkins's 'memes'. I had
not intended it that way, but so be it.

260 Conclusions

course it was I who chose to privilege the torchbearers and Porphyry's De antro
nympharum in my explications and I who imported the concept of 'star- talk'. In
the end, formal circularity just has to be accepted.

The identification of themes is a large part of interpretation — scholarly
interpretation, that is, not the esoteric explications of Mithraic Fathers. Identi-
fying themes, however, is not an analytical task. One is not breaking something
down into its components. Rather it is a matter of seeing what principles emerge
as one explores symbolic structures and star-talk narratives. Baldly listing themes
is not an appropriate hermeneutic strategy.

In this study, now at its conclusion, I have begun the task of reinterpreting the
Mithraic mysteries on what I hope are sounder heuristic and hermeneutic
principles and a sounder theoretical base. Begun, but not completed; for the
project of interpretation is open-ended, and I hope not only to go further myself
but also that others will venture along this road.

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1998. 'Mithras, der Nachthimmel: Eine Dekodierung der romischen Mithraskult-

bilder mit Hilfe des Awesta', Traditio, 53: 1-36.
2000. 'Kultbilder des Mithras im Licht einer neuen Deutung unter besonderer

Beriicksichtigung des Reliefs von Mannheim', Mannheimer Geschichtsbldtter, nf 7:

11-55.
White, L. M. 1989. Building God's House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation

Among Pagans, Jews and Christians (Baltimore and London).

References 27 1

Whitehouse, H. 2000. Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity (Oxford).

2004. Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission, Cognitive

Science of Religion Series (Walnut Creek, Calif).

and Laidlaw, J. (eds), 2004. Ritual and Memory: Toward a Comparative Anthro-

pology of Religion, Cognitive Science of Religion Series (Walnut Creek, Calif).

and Martin, L. H. (eds.), 2004. Theorizing Religions Past, Cognitive Science of

Religion Series (Walnut Creek, Calif).
Widengren, G. 1966. 'The Mithraic Mysteries in the Greco-Roman world with special

regard to their Iranian background,' in La Persia e il mondo greco-romano, Accademia

Nazionale dei Lincei, Anno 363, Quaderno 76 (Rome): 433—55.
1980. 'Reflections on the origins of the Mithraic Mysteries', in Perennitas: Studi in

onore di Angelo Brelich (Rome): 645-68.
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de TEmpire romain, Bibl. des Ec. franc. d'Athenes et de Rome, 183 (Rome and Paris).
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Word & Image, 5: 2-18.

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Index of Mithraic Monuments

(a) Monuments in Vermaseren 1956-60 ('V')

22a,

22b: 48

31:

227-39, 252

32:

230-2

66:

111

68:

75:

219 n. 23

180

105-6

186

111

226

105

229

105

239-43: 30 n. 9, 34, 58, 103-16

266: 133 n. 45

287-93: 114

299: 39 n., 114

335: 17 n. 4,58 n., 159

338: 105

389-90: 58 n., 105-6

400-5: 98

417: 194

457: 105

461: 27-8

476: 39 n„ 105

485: 73

543: 79 n. 20

641

810

199, 204, 217, 218, 222

847

860

219,233

985

158 n.

1083: 21 n. 14

1118: 195

1896: 22 n. 16

1935: 241 n. 3

1958: 196,241 n. 3

1972: 241 n. 3

2027-2140: 21 n.12

2327: 58

(b) Other monuments

Caesarea mithraeum 21 n. 13, 77, 105

Capua mithraeum 151

Mainz ritual vessel 6 n. 8, 58, 76, 83, 133 n.

45, 151, 161
Marino mithraeum 105-7, 143
Ponza mithraeum 58, 109, 225, 234
Schwertheim 1974: 35, no. 36: 77
Tienen mithraeum 70 n.
Vulci mithraeum 111,114-15

Index of Ancient Authors

AELIAN

26:26-9: 22 n. 15

On the Nature of Animals

61,73

Mark

2.2G: 215

14:22-5: 22 n.15

ANTIOCHUS OF ATHENS

Luke

Calendar of (Boll 1910) 209-10,254-6

22:17-19: 22 n. 15

in CCAG:

John

1.163: 254

3:4: 43

4.153-4: 252 n.

Romans

7.127: 248-9

8:20: 169 n.

7.128: 211, 221,

249

1 Corinthians

8.3.112-13: 248

-9

11:17-22: 22 n. 17

APULEIUS

11:23-5: 22 n. 15

Metamorphoses

11: 3

CICERO

ARATUS

De natura deorum

Phaenomena

2.88: 124, 125

37-44: 170-5

De republica

594-5: 256

1.21-2: 124

ARISTOTLE

'Dream of Scipio' (Somnium Scipionis)

Frag. 15: 132

3.4-43: 118

AUGUSTINE

3.7: 113

Christian Doctrine

Tusculan Disputations

2.21-4: 168

1.63: 124 n. 25, 125

2.27-8: 191

CLAUDIAN

City of God

Carmina minora

5.3: 116

51: 124 n. 25

Commentary on Genesis

CLEMENT

8.4.8: 192

Stromateis

6.110.3: 166 n. 13

BALBILLUS

cleomedes (ed. Todd)

in CCAG:

Caelestia (De motu circulari)

8.3.104: 255

1.2.60-1: 245

BIBLE

1.8.46-51: 208

Genesis

1:14-19: 165

DIO, CASSIUS

49:9: 176

Roman Histories

Isaiah

53.27.2: 105, 120

34:4: 177

DIO CHRYSOSTOM

Matthew

Oration 12 (Olympicus)

2:1-12: 166

27-37: 134

17:14-21: 170 n

27: 135

Index of Ancient Authors

275

33: 133-4
39-40: 134

DIOGENES LAERTIUS

Lives of the Philosophers
7.144-6: 252
7.144: 240
7.146: 236-8

DOROTHEUS OF SIDON

79:

100

81:

100

83:

101

MACROBIUS

Commentary on the Dream ofScipio
1.16.8-13: 113 n. 12

MANILIUS

Carmen astrologicum

Astronomica

1.1.8: 233 n. 49

1.397: 255

2.28-33: 233 n. 49

1.402: 252 n. 18

1.403: 255

EUDOXUS (PSEUDO-)

5.206-11: 255

Ars Eudoxi

MAXIMUS CONFESSOR

27: 241 n. 2

in CCAG:

EURIPIDES

7.100-1: 177-8

Frag. 506 (Nauck): 177 n.

ORIGEN

HERACLITUS

Commentary on John

Frag. 51 (DK): 6, 83

1.68: 164

HIPPOLYTUS

Commentary on Matthew

Refutation of All Heresies

13.6: 170 n.

4.46-50: 170-5

Contra Celsum

4.49: 172 n.

1.9: 47

4.50: 172

1.12

4, 47, 153-4

HOMER 46, 134

5.10

179

Hymn to Demeter

5.13

169 n.

270-4, 470-82: 10 n. 13

6.22

83-4, 114

Odyssey

Philocalia

13.102-12: 85-6, 171, 190

23.20: 164, 166, 169 n„ 175

13.109-12: 130

OVID

Fasti

JULIAN

6.263-83: 124 n. 25

Oration 7

217C: 161 n.

PAPYRI

222C-D: 161 n.

P.Berol. 21196: 59 n., 63 n. 42

POxy. 4141: 239

LACTANTIUS

PLATO

Divine Institutes

Phaedrus 178

2.5.18: 124 n. 25

Republic

LACTANTIUS PLACIDUS, See STATIUS,

'Myth of Er 116, 129-30, 247

Thebaiad

Timaeus 79, 83, 134, 149, 179-88

LUCIAN

30b6-9: 181

On the Dance 99-101

34al-4: 181

72: 100

34a8-b9: 181

76: 100

35-6

: 186 n.

276

Index of Ancient Authors

Timaeus (cont'd)

PROCLUS

38c2-6: 79

Commentary on Plato's Republic (In remp.)

39a6: 246

2.108.17-30: 151

39c5-d7: 114

2.128.26-129.13: 129-30

40: 183 n. 43

Commentary on Plato's Timaeus (In. Tim.)

40a2-b6: 182

3.56.31-57: 247

41-7: 79, 184

3.78.29-80.22: 246

43a4-6: 183

3.79.12-18: 247

46e7-47b2: 182

3.80.5-9: 247-9

47b5-c5: 79, 149 n.

62, 185

3.80.12-17: 247

90a2-9: 184

PTOLEMY

90c6-d7: 149 n. 62,

185

Almagest 33 n. 18, 179-80, 236

91d6-el: 185

1.1: 180

91e6-92a7: 184

1.3: 180 n. 39

PLINY

1.6: 113

Natural History 61,73

Tetrabiblos 33 n. 18, 61

18.235: 228

1.1: 179-80

18.271: 228

PLOTINUS

SALLUSTIUS

Enneads

De diis et mundo

2.3.1-6: 187, 188

15: 105

2.3.7: 186, 188

STATIUS

3.1.6: 188

Thebaiad

4.4.6-8: 187 n. 49

1.719-20: 222

PLUTARCH

SUETONIUS

On his and Osiris

Nero

27: 2, 10, 62, 136

31.2: 121

46: 111 n.

64-7: 61

TERTULLIAN

PORPHYRY

Ad Scapulam

De abstinentia

3.3: 226

4.16: 215

De Idolatria

De antro nympharum

9.4: 166 n. 13

2-4: 85, 190

THEON OF SMYRNA

4: 171 n. 25, 171 n.

Expositio

5-9: 86

3.31: 241

6: 5 n. 6, 16-17, 23-

-4, 26, 30, 34, 41-4,

3.33: 241

62, 80, 84, 86, 102-15, 142, 199

3.41: 241

18: 198

3.43: 240-1

20-9: 86

TIMAEUS OF LOCRI (PSEUDO-)

20-31: 111

On the Nature of the Universe and the Soul

21-9: 213

29: 241 n. 2

VARRO

86, 103-15, 185

-6,212

De lingua latina

6, 82-4, 102, 259

7.6-8: 205

Index of Ancient Authors

277

De re rustica
3.5.13: 123
3.8-17: 121-2

VETTIUS VALENS

Anthologies 61

1.18: 221-2, 249

VITRUVIUS
On Architecture
9.8: 38,205

ZENO OF VERONA,

Tractatus

1.38: 175-7
1.38.1.2: 175
1.38.2.4: 176

General Index

Aemilianus Corfinius Olympius 98

'aether' ('fifth essence') 180

Ahriman 238

Aldebaran 208

allegory 85-6, 159, 161 n„ 170-5

Anabibazon and Katabibazon, see nodes,

lunar
anaphoric clock, the 38, 205-6
Andromeda 173
angels 1 67

anomaly (astronomical) 244—53
Antares 208

Antikythera Mechanism, the 124-5
Antiochus I of Commagene 227, 253
Antiochus IV of Commagene 253
Antiochus of Athens (see also Index of

Ancient Authors) 209-1 1, 221, 245,

248-9, 253-6
apogee/perigee, see motion, in 'depth'

(bathos)
apokatastasis (Great Return/Year) 254-6
Apollo 222

Apollo, star of, see Mercury
Apollo Mithras Helios Hermes' 230-1
Aquarius 163 n., 195-7,216-26,

234-9
Aratus, Gnostic interpreters of 170—5
Archery of the Father' (ritual) 6 n. 8, 133 n.

45, 151
Archimedes 123—5
'argument of latitude' 239, 249
Aries, see equinoxes; opposition(s), Aries

(spring equinox) vs. Libra (autumn

equinox)
Artagnes Heracles Ares' 230—1
astronomy, astrology, and astral lore

7-8, 30-9, 49-50, 51, 60, 61, 72,

77-9, 103-16, 128-30, 153, 160-239,

240-56
astronomy, Babylonian 233, 249—50

augural templum 205

Augustine (see also Index of Ancient Authors)

on astrology 167—9

semiotics of 191—2
Aurelius Victor Augentius 98
Auriga 35
'axioms' 5-6, 10, 11, 66, 81-5, 148,

257-9
axis, universal 109—11

Balbillus, see Claudius Balbillus, Ti.
banquet scene (Mithraic) 7, 21-2, 23, 27-8,

70, 96, 258
Barberini mithraeum, see Index of Mithraic

Monuments, V389-90
bathos (t.t. for distance from earth) 207,

243-51
Bausani, A. 36
bears 109, 225 n. 33
bees 198

belief system (faith) 2, 40, 53-6, 62
benches, side-, see opposition(s)
Bianchi, U. 51-2
biga (ox-drawn) 197, 199, 204
biogenetic structuralism 13, 131, 136—48,

151-2
blood 28

Boyer, P. 65, 93, 135 n.
bull 31, 37, 107, 161-4, 195-9, 217, 219,

223-5
bull-killing, see tauroctony
Burkert, W. 133-4, 136, 151

caduceus 27-8

Campbell, L. A. 28, 49 n. 15, 80 n.

Cancer 200-3, 218-27, 252 n. 17, 254; see

also opposition(s), Cancer (summer

solstice) vs. Capricorn (winter solstice);

solstices
Canis Major/Minor 31, 160-4, 173, 195-7,

201-3, 255-6

General Index

279

caput/cauda draconis, see nodes, lunar
Capricorn, see opposition(s), Cancer

(summer solstice) vs. Capricorn (winter

solstice); solstices
Cassiopeia 173
Cautes and Cautopates 6, 31,

107-12, 130, 143, 161 n., 195-7,

202-3, 207-8, 210-14, 216-17, 220,

222, 226, 259
'cave' 16-17, 41-4, 45, 62, 63, 80, 85-6,

102-16, 127, 132, 199-200, 222-3
'celestial navigation' 149—50, 173—4
Cepheus 173
Cetus 173
Chamulas:

church (S. Juan) of 119-20
culture of 12, 65, 74-7, 80-2, 119-20
Christian origins 2, 5, 12, 14, 20-2, 47,

50 n. 21, 53-4, 95, 96
Christianity, early, see Christian origins
circus 123
Claudius Balbillus, Ti. 15 n., 51, 227,

254-5
Claudius Thrasyllus, Ti. 5 1
Clauss, M. 3, 19, 23, 24 n. 24, 26, 31,

36 nn. 24-5, 49, 72
Cleomedes 208, 245-6
clocks 122-8
cognition 2, 4, 8, 13, 24, 62, 82, 88-101,

108-9, 129, 132, 134-52, 153-4, 186,

237, 257-60
cognitive science of religion (CSR) 13, 65,

88-98
'cognized environment' 141—52
colporteurs 53, 57—8
colures, equinoctial/solstitial 108, 111
Commagene, kingdom of:

astronomy/astrology in 15 n., 51,

227-39, 242, 252-5
Mithras-worship in 51, 227-33, 237-9,

242
personification of 230—1
'commissioning' scene 25
concentric spheres, theory of (Eudoxus,

Callippus, Aristotle) 241-3, 245, 253
conjunctions of Sun and Moon 222-39

constellations (as star-talk signs in the

tauroctony) 194-7
contradiction/paradox 76, 95—6, 108—9,

143, 196,205,212-14,259
Corona Borealis 173
Corvus 31, 160-4, 192-3,201-3
cosmology, Iranian 238—9
cosmology, Mithraic, see astronomy/

astrology; initiates of Mithras, ethos and

world view
cosmos (as divine and rational) 178—88
Crater 31, 195-7, 201-3
Cronius 86

cult meal (Mithraic) 21-2, 23, 70, 121
culture, human 88—92
Cumont, F. 3, 14, 15, 17-19, 27-30, 34,

39-40, 48, 53-4
cup 31, 192, 195-7, 216
Cybele and Attis, cult of 3
Cygnus 173

d'Aquili, E. G. 137-47

day 126-8

demons 167—70

'depression' 211 n. 17

designers, see representations, public, makers

of
dexiosis, representation of 230—2
Dio Chrysostom's theory of representations

(see also Index of Ancient

Authors) 133-6
Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux) 202
doctrine 4, 16-25, 40, 41-64, 85, 86, 94-6,

258
dog 22, 23, 31, 38, 158-64, 195-7, 256
Dog-star, see Sirius

'domains' 6, 10, 11, 66, 212-14, 257-9
domes 105, 120-1, 150
Domus Aurea 121
Dorrie, H. 228-31

Draco 31 n. 12, 109 n. 8, 160, 163, 173
'Dream of Scipio' 117-18
'dryness' 73, 193

eagles 215—16

earth 77, 80, 110, 118, 143, 247-8

280

General Index

eclipses 37, 124 n. 28, 222-6, 233-9, 252
ecliptic 31, 78, 107-16, 203, 206-39,

240-56
'Egyptian' religion 47—8
Eleusinian Mysteries 133, 198
emotion(s) 132, 136-48
'encyclopaedia', the 61, 72-3, 193, 215-16
enthronement 133
epicycles and eccentrics, theory of

(Hipparchus, Ptolomy) 241-2, 244-5,

252,253
equator, celestial 78, 86, 107-11
equinoxes 78, 86, 107-16, 122, 127-8, 130,

185-6, 209-12
eschatology 177-8
Eubulus 16, 86

eucharist, Christian 112, 130-1, 151-2
Eudemus, astronomy of 241, 253
'evocation' 159, 162-3
evolutionary theory 89-93, 96-7
'exaltation(s)' and 'humiliation(s)',

astrological 198-9, 210-11, 219, 222,

224, 233, 245, 248
exegesis/interpretation 190-4, 216
exhalma (astrological t.t.) 255
experience (pathos) 129, 132,

133-6, 150-2

Father (grade) 22, 64, 76, 83, 98, 215-16

Father of Fathers 98

'fiery breath' 76—7

fire/heat 27-8, 73, 75-7, 80-1, 132, 182,

255
fixed stars, sphere of the 77-9, 118, 129,

143, 149-50, 182, 247-8

Geertz, C. 4, 65, 67-70, 74 n., 79, 238
Gemini 31, 195-7, 201-3
genesis/apogenesis, see under opposition(s)
Gordon, R. L. 27 n. 1, 61 n. 40, 73-4, 215
Gossen, G. 74-7, 119-20
grades, Mithraic 7, 22, 23 n. 12, 30, 38, 52,
59, 70-1, 72-7, 98, 114, 161, 258

Hannah, R. 247
'harmony' 6, 82-3, 148

heaven as text 164-7, 171, 177, 186-8, 258

Heaven's Gate, cult of 12, 131—2

Hegedus, T. 165 n., 166 n. 13

Helios, see Sun

helix/helicoidal motion 240—53

hemispheres, celestial 109-11, 202-3

Hera 232

Heracles, star of, see Mars

Heraclides of Pontus 242 n. 5

Hercules 173

Hipparchus, see precession of the equinoxes

honey 73, 75-6

horoscopes 175-7, 228-33

hours 126-8

'houses', planetary 61, 107, 215, 218-20,

223-6, 228, 233
Hydra 31, 160-4, 195-7, 200-3, 256
hyenas 61

'iconic' signs 195—6

iconography 3, 7, 16-25, 26-39, 55-8, 59,

62,79, 154-5,258
'idiom', see 'star-talk'
'image of the cosmos' 5 n. 6, 16—17, 31, 34,

41-4, 62, 63, 65-6, 86, 102-31, 134,

136-52, 141-52, 161, 182, 200, 212
image(s) 2, 62, 95, 105, 134, 136, 155,

223
imitation(s) (mimesis) 2, 62, 76, 95,

105-6, 136, 185
incense 73, 75—6

Indigo Bunting 149-50, 173-4, 184-5
Indonesian cultures 68
'ineffability' 150
initiates of Mithras:

cognitive/intellectual capacities 4,

44-50, 56, 87, 96-8, 108-9, 129, 132,

141-8, 150-2, 153-4, 159
ethos and world view 7, 65, 69—74,

77-85, 102-18, 142-8, 159,

190-227, 238, 248, 253-6, 257-60
fellowship 63, 148
social status 44, 48-50
teachers and learners (leaders and led, the

'wise' and the 'vulgar') 4, 56-7, 59, 63,

95-8, 117

General Index

281

initiation, rites of 4, 41-3, 47, 62, 83, 98,
102, 130, 133-4, 151, 153-4

Insler, S. 37-8

'Integrated Causal Model' (ICM) 91-2, 97

invictus, see 'unconquered'

Iranian idiom in Mithraism 28-30, 48, 51,
60,72,214,238-9

Isis/Isism 2, 3, 62, 257 n.

Iulius Antiochus Epiphanes Philopappus,
C. 253-4

Jacobs, B. 37

Judaism 47

Julian the Theurgist 247 n.

Jupiter 38, 118, 179, 228-33, 252

knife of Mithras 107

'knowing that' and 'knowing how to' 145—6

Kreyenbroek, P. 238-9

Lamberton, R. 42

language, see semantics/semiotics

Lawson, E. T. 155-7

Lepus 256

Leo 31, 36-7, 163 n., 176, 195-7, 200-3,

204, 214-39, 252, 254-6
Libra 107, 200—3; see also equinoxes;

opposition(s), Aries (spring equinox) vs.

Libra (autumn equinox)
light 75-7, 209-10

lion 31, 36-7, 61, 73, 195-7, 216, 223-5
Lion (grade) 7, 22, 38, 61, 73
lion-headed god 29 n. 6, 241, 247
Lion monument of Nemrud Dagh, see Index

of Mithraic Monuments, V31
lunar latitude (in Babylonian

astronomy) 249—50
lunar orbit, northern and southern extremes

of 234-9
Lyra 173

McCauley, R. 155-7

Mack, B. 12

macrocosm/microcosm 79, 108—32, 134,

185, 187
'magi' 48-9

'Magusaeans' 48

Mars 38, 107, 118,228-33,

235, 252
Martin, L. 159

Mazdaism, see Iranian idiom in Mithraism
meaning, see semantics/semiotics
men, construction of 76
memory 151

Mercury 38, 118, 228-33, 252
Mercury (pschopompos) 27—8
Merkelbach, R. 23 n. 22, 38, 51
Miles (grade) 38
mind and brain 9, 13 n. 18,

88-94, 135 n., 136-52, 182-5
mithraeum 4, 5 n. 6, 7, 16-17, 24,

31, 34, 41-4, 59-60, 65-6, 70-1, 72,
102-17, 119-20, 121, 128-30, 132,
141-8, 150-2, 161, 185, 205-6, 212,
258
Mithraic origins 14-15,253-6
Mithraists, see initiates
Mithras:

as archer 6 n. 8, 83
as bull-killer, see tauroctony
as 'cattle-thief 198
as creator 16, 102, 106-15
as midday Sun 215
as Sun-in-Leo 214-39
ascending Sol's chariot 241, 247
birth of 219-20
meshes 111, 248

'proper seat' of 107, 120, 128, 130,
185-6, 212
'Mithras Liturgy', the 44 n., 133
'model of and 'model for', see Geertz, C.
'modes' 7, 10, 11, 66, 258-60
'modes of religiosity' 151
month (synodic, sidereal, draconitic,

anomalistic) 124-5, 199,220-39,245,
251-3
Moon/Luna 30, 37, 77-9, 118, 124-5, 131,
143, 161 n., 164, 197-9, 204, 206-7,
218-39,240-53
Moon-in-Cancer 218-27
Moses 47
'motifs' 6, 10, 11,66,257-60

282

General Index

motion {see also opposition(s), universal vs.
planetary motion)
daily/universal 77, 79, 123-5, 143,
149-50, 174, 181-8, 200, 203-5,
241-2, 246-8
helicoidal, see helix/helicoidal motion
in 'depth' {bathos) 243-51
in latitude {platos) 243-5 1
in longitude {mekos) 244—51
non-uniform 247, 251
planetary 77, 79, 123-5, 143, 175,

185-8, 204-5, 241-53
retrograde 246-7
uniform circular 180-6, 249
multivalence, see polysemy
mysteriosophy 51—2
mystery hall 133—6
myth (Mithraic) 17-20

Navaho, ethos and world view of 68
Nemrud Dagh, hierothesion on 230-2, 239,

252
Neopythagoreans, see Neoplatonists
Neoplatonists 44-8, 86, 245
Nero 121

nervous system 136-52
Neugebauer, O., and H. B. Van

Hoesen 228-33, 237-8
neurology, see mind and brain
'neurotheology' 136—48
Newberg, A. B. 137-47
niche, cult- 108-15
niches, mid-bench 111—15
Nigidius Figulus 116
Nock, A. D. 52 n. 29
nodes, lunar 163 n., 206-7, 220-6, 234-9,

252
Nonius Victor Olympius 98
North, J. D. 38
northern/southern extremes, see motion, in

latitude {platos)
Numenius 47, 86, 129-30
Nymphus (grade) 38

ontogeny 88-92, 142
ontology 8-10, 140, 198

'operational environment' 141—50

Ophiuchus 173

opposition(s) 6, 80-5, 87, 148, 162,

257-9
Aldebaran vs. Antares 208
apogee vs. perigee 243—51
Aries (spring equinox) vs. Libra (autumn

equinox) 103-12, 209-12
ascendant (astrological) vs. descendant 83
ascending node vs. descending

node 206-7, 220-6
ascent vs. descent (on the different senses

of these terms in ancient astronomy see

p. 207) 84, 207, 209-14, 220-6,

248-51,259
birth vs. death 80-1
Cancer (summer solstice) vs. Capricorn

(winter solstice) 103-12, 209-13
Cautes vs. Cautopates 222, 259
clockwise vs. counterclockwise 75, 110,

119-20, 132
day vs. night 82-3
earlier vs. later 38, 205
east vs. west 38, 75, 80, 109-16,

119-20, 164, 203-5, 208, 216-17
'exaltation' vs. 'humiliation' 198-9,

210-11, 220-6, 245, 248, 259
fixed stars vs. planets 82-4, 182
genesis vs. apogenesis 80, 84, 107—16,

212-14, 259
heaven vs. earth 1 17-18, 213-14
hot vs. cold 75, 80-1, 107-16,

119-20,213
Leo vs. Aquarius 216—26
life vs. death 214
male vs. female 75, 119—20
midheaven (astrological) vs. lower

midheaven 83
moisture vs. aridity 80—1
mortality vs. immortality 82—4,

111-12,212-14
mortals vs. immortals 86
north vs. south 75, 80, 86, 107-16,

119-20, 206-14, 220-6, 243-51
north wind vs. south wind 107—16, 213,

222

General Index

283

'northern' side-bench vs. 'southern' side-
bench 108-16, 130, 143, 213
right vs. left 38, 75, 83, 107-16,

119-20, 164, 203-5, 208, 216-17
rising Sun vs. setting Sun 213
'same' vs. 'different' 79, 83, 125,

149-50, 182, 186-7
seed-time vs. harvest 80, 214
'sensible' vs. 'intelligible' 82
spring vs. autumn 211—14
summer vs. winter 82, 211—14
Sun vs. Moon 75, 119-20, 197-9,

206-7, 218-27, 234-7, 259
Sun-in-Leo vs. Moon-in-Cancer

218-27
superior vs. inferior 75, 119—20
Taurus vs. Scorpius 162, 208,

216-26
unity vs. multiplicity 83
universal vs. planetary motion 77, 79,

82-4, 110-16, 164, 182, 203-5, 246
up/high vs. down/low (on the different

senses of these terms in ancient

astronomy see p. 207) 75, 80-1,

107-16, 119-20, 143, 206-14, 220-6,

243-51
victory/success vs. defeat/failure 210—11,

225-6, 234-7, 259
way in vs. way out 83—4, 106, 111,

212-13
orientation:

celestial 108-12, 119-20, 121, 194-222
terrestrial 110,119-20,200-5
Origen on astrolgy (and semiotics of) (see also

Index of Ancient Authors) 1 64-7,

169-70
Orion 35
orreries 123—4
Ottaviano Zeno monument, see Index of

Mithraic Monuments, V335

Pantheon 105, 120
pantomime 99-101
paradox, see contradiction
paranatellonta 161, 197, 203, 255-6
Paul of Tarsus 150

Pedersen, S. 247

'periods' (celestial), see motion

Perseus 35, 60, 173

'Persian' religion, see 'Zoroaster'

Phidias 134

Philopappus monument (Athens) 254 n. 19

phylogeny 88-92, 142, 149

planets 30, 38, 52, 72, 77-9, 107-16, 118,

123-5, 143, 161, 175, 179-83, 187-8,

207
Plato, cosmology and psychology of (see also

Index of Ancient Authors) 79,83,

129-30, 149-50, 179-88
Pleiades 235
Plotinus on astral semantics (see also Index of

Ancient Authors) 186-8
Plutarch on representation in religion (see also

Index of Ancient Authors) 2,10,62,

136
polarity, see opposition(s)
pole of the ecliptic 109
poles, celestial 108-16, 149-50, 174 n. 28
polysemy/multivalence 109, 116, 163—4,

198 n. 7
Porphyry on Mithraism (see also Index of

Ancient Authors) 16-17,23-4,41-6,

85-7, 129-30, 171
Posidonius and 'those around' him

124-5, 234-9, 240, 245, 252
precession of the equinoxes 36, 49 n. 19,

50 n. 23, 60, 79 n. 18, 217
'Procession of the Sun-Runner' 76, 128, 161
Proclus (see also Index of Ancient

Authors) 129-30,246-8
Procyon 255—6
Ptolemy (see also Index of Ancient Authors)

on the divinity of celestial bodies

179-80

quadrants/quartering:

'esoteric' (lunar) 216—53

seasonal (solar) 209-11,217
quadriga (horse-drawn) 197, 204

Rappaport, R. 5, 43 n.

Raven (grade) 22, 38, 61, 73, 98

284

General Index

raven 22, 23, 31, 38, 61, 73, 158-64,

192-3, 195-7
reason/rationality 4, 44-50, 60, 79, 132,

149-50, 153-4, 186-7
Regulus 228-33, 252, 255
Religions of Rome (BNP) 52-3
'reorientation' 145
representation(s) (mental, material, verbal,

performative) 2, 9-10, 62, 65, 81,

88-101, 112-13, 116-17, 134-6,

141-52, 190-239, 242, 245, 253,

257-60
representations, public, makers of 55—6,

99-101, 109, 134, 160, 196, 204, 217,

226-7, 234, 237, 253
revolutions (celestial), see motions
risings and settings (astronomical) 38,

254-6
ritual 7, 9, 17, 21-2, 41-3, 62, 63, 68,

70-1, 73, 75, 76, 83, 111, 128-34,

138, 148, 151-2, 155-7,258
Rutgers, A. J. 37

sacrifice 159

'sages', see theologians, ancient (pagan)

salvation 84, 172-5, 213

'Same' and 'Different', see opposition(s)

Saturn 118,219 n. 25, 235

scenes, order of 25

scorpion 22, 23, 31, 38, 158-64, 195-7,

217,219 n. 23
Scorpius 195-7, 199, 200-3, 208,

214-26,234-9,252
seasons 37-8, 209-14
semantics/semiotics 4, 8, 24—5, 55—6,

65-6, 112-13, 153,215,258
Serpens 31 n. 12, 109 n. 8, 160-4,

173
'seven-gated ladder' 83-4,114
'Seven Spheres' mithraeum, see Index of

Mithraic Monuments, V239-43
Sfameni Gasparro, G. 3, 51—2, 226 n. 36
Shema, Jewish 5
signs of the zodiac, see zodiac
signs/signification, see semantics/semiotics
Sirius 164, 252 n. 18, 254-6

Smith, J. Z. 12 n. 16, 112-13

snake 22, 23, 31, 38, 109 n. 8, 158-64,

192, 195-7, 225, 256
snake-encircled figure, see lion-headed god
Solar Temple, cult of 12, 131-2
'solid' signs of the zodiac 216
solstices 84, 127, 130, 132, 209-12
soteriology, Mithraic, see initiates of Mithras,

ethos and world view
soul, descent and ascent of 16—17, 24, 27,

31, 41-4, 62, 65, 79-80, 83-4, 86,

102, 106-14, 121, 128-30, 132-3,

143, 145-6, 150-2, 184-5, 198, 207,

212,259
soul, Platonist representation of the 79, 123,

181-5
soul gates at the solstices 86, 111—12,

129-30, 213
space 77-81, 106 n. 5, 127, 143, 144
Sperber, D. 8, 9, 13, 65, 74 n., 93 n., 117,

155-62, 237
Speidel, M. 35

spheres, celestial, see fixed stars; planets
spheres, 'hollow' and 'solid' 242—51
Spica 31, 195-7
'Spindle of Necessity', see Index of Ancient

Authors, Plato, Republic, 'Myth of Er'
spring 36
Staal, F. 155-6
'Standard Social Science Model'

(SSSM) 91-2, 97
'Star of Bethlehem' 166
stars:

as divine/rational communicators

178-89, 258
as signs 30-8, 164-89, 190-215, 259
'star-talk' 7-8, 11, 15, 39, 65-6, 107, 109,

116-17, 147, 153-4, 160-239, 242,

253, 256, 258-9
Christian theories about 165—7
pagan/philosophical theories

about 170-5, 178-89
users of 165-89
'step function', see astronomy, Babylonian
Stoicism 28
structuralism 6 n. 9, 82, 158

General Index

285

'structures' 7, 10, 11, 66, 71, 72, 105, 260

summer 36

Sun/Sol 5, 10, 11, 22, 30, 37, 60, 66, 76,

77-9, 96, 107-16, 118, 124-5, 131-2,

143, 158, 161 n., 197-9, 204, 206-39,

249-56, 257-9
Sun, birthday of 209-10, 254
Sun (in Chamula culture) 74—7, 81
Sun-in-Leo 214-39, 255-6
sundial 126-8, 205-6
Sun- Runner (grade) 22, 76, 128
supernatural and imaginary beings,

representation of 88-90, 93-4,

99-101
'surmise', see thought
Swerdlow, N. M. 3, 33 n. 18, 35 n. 23,

36 n. 25, 49-51
sword and torch 219-20
symbolist anthropology 4, 65, 67, 92,

155-60
symbols (symbol systems/complexes) 4, 7, 8,

11, 14, 16-25, 27-39, 41, 46, 47, 49,

55-6, 65, 67-85, 96, 102-17, 151,

153-77, 190-239, 257-60
tauroctony:

composition as star map 31—8, 160—1,

194-222, 256
icon and/or mythic event 7, 14, 17, 21—2,

23, 25, 29, 31, 34-9, 52, 57, 59-60,

63, 66, 70, 72, 106-15, 129, 158-64,

190-227, 235, 237, 256, 258

Taurus 31, 36, 107, 161-4, 195-9, 201-3,

204, 208, 214-26, 234-9, 252
Theissen, Gerd 1—2, 5—6
'themes', see 'motifs'
theologians, ancient (pagan) 4, 44—50, 60,

86-7
theology, Mithraic, see initiates of Mithras,

ethos and world view
Theon of Smyrna, astronomy of 240—2,

245, 253
'thick description', see Geertz, C.
thought 2, 65, 95, 133-48; see also

representation(s)
Thrasyllus, see Claudius Thrasyllus, Ti.

time 37-8, 78-9, 106 n. 5, 114, 122-8,
143, 165, 182, 186-7, 205-6, 247
torchbearers, see Cautes and Cautopates
tropics 78 n. 17; see also equinoxes; solstices
Turcan, R. 18-20, 26-8, 45, 48, 52,
54-6, 72, 85, 154-5, 214

UlanseyD. 33 n. 18, 35, 36, 49-51, 60,217
'ultimate sacred postulates', see 'axioms'
'unconquered' 5, 10, 11, 37, 60, 66,

225-6, 257-9
universal and planetary motions, see

opposition(s)
Ursa Major and/or Ursa Minor 109,

172-3, 225 n. 33

Varro's aviary 121—3

Venus 38, 107, 118, 122,231-2

Vermaseren, M. J. 18

Virgo 195-7,200-3

'vulgar', the 4, 44-50, 96-101, 117, 153-4

water 28, 73

Weiss, M. 37

wheat ear 31, 159, 195-7

Whitehouse, H. 151

winds 122, 213, 222

Winds, Tower of the 122

'winds' and 'steps' of the Moon 220—2, 239,

249-51
winter 37
'wise', the 4, 44-50, 96-101, 117,

153-4
women, construction of 61

year 124-8,254

Zeus 134-5

'Zeus Oromasdes' 230—1
zodiac and signs of the 30—1, 78—9,
107-16, 123, 127, 161-4, 175,
197-9, 203-4, 206-39, 240-56
quadrants, seasonal 114-15
'Zoroaster' 16, 46-8, 80, 106
Zoroastrianism, see Iranian idiom in
Mithraism

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